Shinta Mani, making a difference

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

After having heard about it from veteran hotelier Bill Black, and after having written about it, there was no way I could come to Angkor Wat this time and not visit the Shinta Mani.

So the first thing I did when I checked into my hotel was to get the Shinta Mani number and call them to see if I could visit the hotel.

You could rightly ask me why I hadn’t planned for it before I arrived – it would have been so much easier because Bill would have organised it. Well, yours to ask, mine but to answer, planning’s not my strongest suit.

Anyway, after five attempts in which I spoke to at least five different people – I think they all wondered who this bossy, demanding woman was who thought she could just show up and be shown the hotel – I finally decided to get over there myself.

And I am glad I did.

The receptionist, an Apsara dancer, glided up to me ever so gracefully and asked, “Are you the lady who called?” I nodded. She glided me to the restaurant and asked me to wait. “Our manager will be with you in a while,” she said sweetly.

What grace and charm, I thought, as I looked around the restaurant. It’s empty but feels homely. I like the splash of bold, bright colours – yellows, oranges, reds. A lotus flower sits on every table. Very feminine.

Restless, I wander around. I look at a plaque that says the Shinta Mani was commended for “poverty reduction” by responsibletravel.com in November 2006.

On the walls are photos of the Angkor temples, for sale by a Swiss photographer. At the reception desk is a notice announcing an Aspara dance performance. It says the dancers are performed by orphans who have been taught that these skills will please tourists and give them a livelihood.

Everything at Shinta Mani relates back to the people. I go over to the hotel school. You could hardly call it a school in the conventional sense. It’s just a shed right next to it.

In there are a group of students having their lunch break. They’ve just finished their first baking class, trying out coconut, lemon and chocolate tarts. They insist I try them.

The coconut is tasty and crunchy, the lemon is soft and tangy, the chocolate is too sinful at this time of the morning. (They must wonder why city folks feel so guilty about eating when they’d do anything to feed themselves.)

They smile as I give them the thumbs up. A couple of months ago, they didn’t even know what tarts were and what they were supposed to taste like.

These are kids who apply to Shinta Mani every year to be enrolled in a 10-month course to teach them basic skills, and each year, less than 30 are selected. This year’s enrolment is 28, out of whom three (now four) are sponsored.

Manager Chitra Vincent says this year, 225 applied. The ones selected are the lucky ones taken off the streets and given a chance at life.

I spot a girl among them, big smile, shy eyes. I ask her name (“something Moon”) and her age. She sputters out “29”. Her friends broke out in laughter. She claps her hand over her mouth, giggles and corrects herself. “19.”

The youngest is 16. The oldest in the class, a 23-year-old who aspires to be a pastry chef, summons up the courage to ask me a question. “Where you come from?”

I say, “Malaysia.” Chitra asks them to point it out on a map. They are studying geography this week as well. They have trouble finding it. I don’t blame them, I would have had the same problem pointing out Siem Reap on a map when I was 19.

Each year, Shinta Mani endeavours to find sponsors for these students. The highest package, US$1,000, will take care of their education fees and expenses, as well as money for the family – a kid in school is a kid less in the fields. In return, the hotel offers a five-night stay for two, valid for five years.

Chitra says the school is run at a loss each year as the hotel has to subsidise most of them. But it’s an integral part of Shinta Mani’s ethos. It tries to find jobs for its “graduates” and pays their expenses until they find gainful employment either within Shinta Mani or other hotels.

Shinta Mani also supports up to 2,000 villagers across six to seven villages in Siem Reap. Its programme does not run on monetary hand-outs (where you don’t know what happens to it), rather items that will help them build sustainable livelihoods.

It starts with water wells, seeds to start a farm, piglets, sewing machines or bicycles and – the ultimate – brick houses.

The “piggy bank” programme works like this. If you give a pair (US$70 per pair), they will breed twice a year. Each time, they may produce up to 10 piglets which means it could earn the family US$600-$700 a year.

In its fourth year, the programme now has guests returning and visiting the villages to see how their gifts have helped rebuild lives.

“Today, I had an email from two families from Singapore who asked if their water wells and houses are ready so they could come and visit.

“There’s a guest staying at the Meridien who called up to ask about our programme. So it’s not just our guests who are taking part,” says Chitra, a Sri Lankan, who came to work at Shinta Mani four years ago.

She herself has adopted a Cambodian daughter who is now a mother. She shows me pictures of her daughter and grand-daughter. “I am planning a holiday with them this weekend to Kuala Lumpur. What is Genting like?” she asked me.

Shinta Mani is pretty strict about the programme and runs it on a rewards scheme. “We will help them if they are also ready to play their part. We reward them with rice. If they don’t play their part, we remove them from the programme.”

So far, only seven families have been taken out of the scheme, which now supports 340 water wells. But even if the families are removed from the programme, Shinta Mani still sends the children to school.

“It shows people’s willingness to work if given a chance. The hardest working are the women with children, who have been abandoned by their husbands. There was a girl in her 20s with two children. Her husband left her and has since remarried.

“We gave her seeds and a plot of land and told her we’d come back in two weeks to see how she was getting along. By chance, we returned in three days and she had transformed the place – what would take two weeks, she took three days,” says Chitra.

The programme, in turn, feeds the hotel with business. It seems travellers want to be part of a place which connects them to the local communities.

Since December, Shinta Mani has been running full occupancy, says Chitra, with April, usually a low month, looking rather promising.

On my next trip to Siem Reap planned for April, I intend to visit the villages, bearing piglets.