My Visit to F2F Cambodia (Part 1) — By Julie Craig-Lautens

Power & Joy in Connecting: With the Face-to-Face Victory Garden Campaign

Join us as we share a series of heartfelt reflections from one of our dedicated supporters, Julie Craig Lautens, who recently traveled to Cambodia to witness our food security efforts firsthand.

In April 2024, I travelled to Pursat Province, Cambodia, for my first in-person meeting with Face-to-Face (F2F) Victory Garden Campaign Country Manager, Ms. In Sakara, and her team. I am a coach with Face-to-Face and also a donor to the organization, funding my own travel to Cambodia. As a coach, I work with leaders as a thought partner and share know-how in leadership and team development. I am also a long-time home vegetable gardener, a special shared connection with the whole F2F organization. The timing of my trip allowed me to join Founder and Executive Director Ken Wong on his spring visit to check in with the F2F team and the Campaign’s Victory Garden beneficiaries in Pursat.

On my visit, I had the opportunity to learn more about the history of F2F from Ken. The Face-to-Face Project began in 2004 to improve life for the rural poor in Cambodia and Malawi. In founding F2F, Ken took inspiration from Buddhist nuns working with dying AIDS patients in the slums of Phnom Penh. The nuns shared present-moment peace and contentment with these people, shifting them from future longing and past regret. Ken connected this mindset to the need to counter hunger and poverty for people living in the challenging rural landscapes of Pursat Province, Cambodia, and the country of Malawi and began a Victory Garden Campaign.

I became aware of The Face-to-Face Project in 2018 through friends and family in Oberlin, Ohio, where Ken and I grew up. Photos and success stories shared on social media and chat among mutual friends and Ken, combined with my own interest in vegetable gardening, drew me in. Reaching out to learn more and ask how I might lend a hand as a coach, Ken messaged back, “Can you start tomorrow?” I loved his brilliant energy and easily said yes to providing management training and coaching to the leaders of the F2F Campaign in Malawi.

Eighteen months later, Ken introduced me to Sakara, and I shifted my focus to supporting her in Cambodia. We first spoke on a grainy cell phone video in late 2020, comparing notes on our countries’ responses to COVID-19. Since then, we have spoken regularly about the many challenges in establishing a new charity and building alignment with the board, government, and across the F2F network of facilitators and assistants. My April trip gave us the wonderful opportunity to work together in person for the first time.

This four-part blog tells the story of the organization, its leaders and beneficiaries, and the impact of the gardens being created and cultivated.