Children of the Mekong - non story with a happy ending

It all started when…

… I got a call from the charity Children of the Mekong (http://childrenofthemekong.org/uk).
COTM supports the education of more than 20,000 children from some of the poorest communities in south east Asia. Last year they launched a scholarship scheme to bring two outstanding students to the UK to improve their English and get first hand experience shadowing senior executives in the City. Last year’s graduates Kosal and Chhengtay grew up in absolute poverty but both returned home and found good jobs in the industries they had dreamt of working in.
Unfortunately when the charity applied for temporary visitor visas for this year’s graduates Virort and Cheang the Home Office issued a point blank refusal which arrived three days before they were due to leave Cambodia. The immigration department said that because their only means of support was the charity it did not believe they would return home at the end of their visit. This was completely missing the point. COTM tried to appeal but got nowhere so they asked if I would be prepared to write a story about it. I got a commission from the Mail on Sunday and started work. Two telephone calls and a couple of emails later the Home Office said they were looking into it “as a matter of urgency”.
The refusal letter claimed the students had failed to provide documentation to support their application. In fact the COTM had provided 35 supporting letters and documents to the embassy in Bangkok which I was able to obtain copies of and forward to the immigration officer reviewing the appeal.
As a freelance it is not a good thing when a story is “killed” but the fact the Home Office relented and issued their visas despite the earlier refusal meant I at least got the chance to go to London and say hello.

I believe the refusal was part of the “hostile environment” introduced by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary. The grounds for refusing the visa completely missed the point that the young people supported by COTM come from poor, often subsistence, family backgrounds. Without the charity’s help they would have been condemned to repeat the cycle of poverty. So of course they had no financial support apart from the charity.
This is a successful, transforming charity making a huge difference not just to the lives of tens of thousands of young people. It is helping Cambodia drag itself out of the poverty that was the result of the years of the Killing Fields when the country’s middle class was murdered. Visit their website for more information