Have you ever wondered why the Foxglove Project supports the Focus Cambodia project?

Like so many things, it all comes down to a person. And in this case, that person is Lesley Hewett.

Lesley was a fifty-something widow when she first ventured to Cambodia in the mid 1990s. At that time, it wasn’t a visitor’s paradise. In fact, the Executive Director of the Cambodia Hotels Association recalls,
“In 1998, you couldn’t even travel through the country. It only attracted the most daring travellers around.”

But Lesley was looking for purpose and contribution and she found it in spades. After helping other organisations for more than a decade, Lesley founded the charity Focus Cambodia and together with a team of equally passionate and industrious women, set out to make a difference.

Focus Cambodia built a primary school in rural Cambodia (now run as a partnership with the Ministry of Education), sunk wells to provide clean water and sanitation to schools and local communities, established a school in tip community, funded classrooms and small business initiatives for sustainability, supported widows and the elderly with homes and basic assistance, and helped a children’s home to become registered and independent.

We honour her legacy with a project that continues to serve the people of Cambodia, focusing on clean water and sanitation initiatives, as well as helping young women into vocational training and small business. And we are proud to say that her fingerprints remain all over everything that we do!