Come, Take a Walk With Us.
It has been a little while since we talked about everything happening at Heartprint Hub, and this felt like the perfect time to take you on a little walking tour.
The Hub has become such a meaningful and beautiful part of our wider Heartprint community. It’s not just a building. It’s not just a café, or a shop, or a salon.
It’s all of those things, but also a place where training, work, friendship, confidence, and opportunity all meet under one roof. (Oh, yes. And cake. Never forget the cake!)
So come with us for a few minutes. We thought we would walk you through the space, share what we see, and hopefully help you picture it too.
Heartprint Hub is located close to central Siem Reap on Night Market Road. As you approach, one of the first things you notice is how welcoming it feels from the outside. Lush green plants surround the entrance, softening the busy street and giving you that lovely feeling that you are stepping into somewhere calm, cared for, and full of life.
Step inside and the first impression is space, light, and coolness. The Hub is larger than people often expect, with soft cream walls, strategic splashes of calming turquoise, and polished poured-concrete floors that feel wonderfully cool underfoot, especially on the many hot days we know so well here in Siem Reap.
Near the front is one of our favourite little details: a bicycle cart. In another setting, you might expect to see it filled with flowers, green plants, fruit, or vegetables. At Heartprint Hub, it is filled with handmade goods created by the women in our mums’ group. They are colourful, whimsical, and practical pieces made upstairs in the sewing room, which we will visit in just a moment. It sits beside a beautifully tiled column and gives you an immediate sense of what the Hub is all about: creativity, enterprise, and opportunity.
Look around and you will see the café opening out to the left, with tables scattered throughout the space and greenery along the walls. It is designed to feel easy and welcoming, whether you are stopping in for takeaway, sitting down for lunch, meeting a friend for coffee, or simply taking a quiet pause in your day.
If we wander toward the back, we come into the shop area, which is especially full at the moment. Our mums have been very busy, and the shelves are filled with their handmade pieces. It is a wonderful time to come in, have a browse, and pick up something beautiful — knowing that each purchase directly supports the women who made it.
Back in the café, you will see what we jokingly think of as our Heartprint “leaderboard.” It is not a golf scoreboard, but it does tell a pretty extraordinary story. The sign shows Heartprint in action: 145 homes built, 131 toilets installed, 10 playgrounds created, 537 bicycles distributed, 150 baby baskets delivered, and 115 people currently in our programs.
And now, of course, we have to pause at one of the most tempting stops on the tour: the cake fridge.
The offerings change daily, but today we can choose from caramel slice, brownies, chocolate rolls, coffee cake, carrot cake, and banana cake. It is a daily challenge to have just one!
Behind the counter and into the kitchen, the café team is busy preparing lunch, making drinks, and getting ready for the day. There we see Mao, our chief cook, working alongside her team. Mao has been a valued member of the Heartprint family for almost ten years, and many of you may remember her story from a newsletter a few months back. We will come back to Mao in a moment, because she has just received some very special news: she and her family now qualify for a new Heartprint home.
Nearby is our little book nook, where visitors can pick up something to read while they have a coffee, or simply sit for a while and enjoy the space. That is an important part of what we want the Hub to be: not only a place to buy something or eat something, but a place to feel welcome.
And soon, the Hub will offer something else as well: a large, airy meeting room available for people in the wider Siem Reap community to use for a variety of purposes, for a small fee or free of charge in some cases. We know how difficult it can be for groups, small organisations, informal community efforts, and local initiatives to find a place to meet without having to rent a room. Heartprint is all about community, and we want the Hub to help bring people together in practical and welcoming ways.
From there, let’s head upstairs.
As you climb the stairs, you are surrounded by colour, words, and encouragement. Many of the signs around the Hub have been made by women in our programmes, and because so much of the Hub’s work is centred around women, the messages feel especially fitting.
One sign features the Atticus quote: “She was powerful not because she wasn’t scared, but because she went on so strongly despite the fear.” That feels deeply appropriate for many of the women who first come to Heartprint. Starting something new can be intimidating. Learning a skill, joining a program, walking into a new room, or imagining a different future can all take courage. But what we see, again and again, is that fear begins to fall away when women are supported, encouraged, and surrounded by others who believe in them.
Under the stairs, each step carries a word: uplift, dream, equality, kindness, embrace, believe. The words are set against bright, beautiful paintings, and they make the simple act of walking upstairs feel like part of the Heartprint story.
At the top, turn one way and you come to the hair salon training space. Turn the other way and you reach the sewing room.
Let’s start with the sewing room.
It is a large, beautiful wooden room, with the feeling of an old Khmer house. It is warm, open, and full of activity. At the front are individual cubbies where each of the mums can keep her work in progress. Around the room are tables, sewing machines, fabric, supplies, and pieces in various stages of being made.
There are always a few corners that look wonderfully busy, and perhaps a little chaotic to an outsider. But somehow everyone knows what belongs where, whose work is whose, what needs finishing, and what is coming next. It works.
One of the loveliest things about the room is the space in the middle. The women can sit together, talk, share ideas, help each other, and work at their own pace and on their own schedules. It is productive, but it is also social. You can feel the friendship and support in the room. It is not just a workshop. It is a place where confidence is built stitch by stitch, conversation by conversation.
Now let’s head back the other way to the salon.
The first thing you notice is how beautiful the room is. A mural covers the entire back wall, filled with hornbills, blue skies, bright colours, greenery, and foliage. It was painted by our wonderful friend Tamara Venn, an artist based here in Siem Reap, and it gives the whole room a feeling of energy, beauty, and possibility.
When you sit in one of the stylist chairs and look into the big mirror, Tamara’s mural is reflected behind you. It makes you feel as if you are sitting in nature, which adds to the calm and relaxing atmosphere of the room.
The salon is a training space, but it also feels like a place of transformation in every sense of the word. Women will train here,practise here, and build skills that will help them move toward a more secure, happy, and sustainable way of life. Alongside the salon, we also have a treatment room, creating even more opportunities for practical training and future employment.
And that brings us back to Mao.
Mao has been part of Heartprint for almost a decade. Over the years, she has helped, encouraged, and trained young people, and today she is both a trainer and our head cook at Heartprint Hub. She is one of those people whose quiet strength and steady presence make a lasting impression on everyone around her.
Her journey has not been easy. Mao was born into extreme poverty, and by the age of ten she had already narrowly survived three life-threatening incidents — two drowning accidents and one severe illness. But through hardship and perseverance, she has grown into one of the most determined, compassionate, and capable women we know.
Mao is now 36. She is married to Heang, who is 39, and together they have two daughters, aged 13 and 5. Both girls are in school and, like their parents, are eager to learn.
Heang also grew up in poverty and has worked hard throughout his life. When he was 18, he completed electrician training, but after paying for tuition, he was unable to afford the final certification fee required to work professionally. It is one of the many cruel circles of poverty: even after doing the training, the final step needed to earn a stable income can still be out of reach.
Heang went on to find work as a traditional dancer with a local cultural company, where he worked for many years. But when COVID came, the company closed and he lost his job.
At the moment, Mao, Heang, and their daughters are living in a house owned by Heang’s father. For a time, that arrangement worked because his father was living elsewhere with his wife. Recently, however, his father returned and understandably wanted to live in his own home again. Mao, Heang, and their daughters have been asked to move out.
It is a very difficult situation. They do not have savings, and their current salaries do not make it possible for them to take on a housing loan.
Thankfully, Mao’s late mother left the family a precious gift before she passed away: a small piece of land within the family compound where they have permission to build a home. The land offers long-term security, but despite all their hard work, Mao and Heang simply do not have the financial resources to build a house.
This is a family we know well. Mao has been a part of Heartprint and worked with us wholeheartedly for nearly ten years. She has played a meaningful role in training and encouraging other young women, and she has invested so much of herself in this community.
It is now our honour to invest in her new home.
Heartprint are working with Mao and her family to build a safe, permanent home. A home of their own will give them stability during a difficult transition, protect them from further uncertainty, and provide a healthy environment where their daughters can study, grow, and feel secure.
Most importantly, this home is an investment in a family that has consistently invested in others. Mao and Heang have shown resilience, commitment, and dignity through every challenge they have faced. We are deeply grateful that, thanks to our generous supporters, we can now help them take this next step toward a safer and more stable future.
Yours truly,
