Remember festivals? Ah, they were great, weren’t they? There would be movies. There would be a dance floor. Food stalls. A well-stocked bar. Legendary music festival performances recreated on stage for your immersive viewing pleasure.

Oh, and a “smashing pumpkin” stall, obviously, where you can take out months of pent-up lockdown frustration on a pumpkin. With a mallet.

But the best thing? The money raised goes to two Cambodian communities that have been hit especially hard by the pandemic: farmers up in Kampong Chhnang, and people in dire straits stuck in lockdown in Phnom Penh – particularly informal workers and their families.

You may be wondering… why all the pumpkins? Well, as you may know, farmers around Cambodia have seriously struggled to shift produce during the pandemic. Plummeting prices means many families and communities are at risk of going bankrupt. So, why not make pumpkins the festival theme? With journalist Khorn Nary’s help, the team behind the festival reached the farmers and offered to buy up 400 kilos of pumpkin (at full, pre-pandemic price).

Pumpkins aside, many people in the capital are trapped in lockdown and struggling to get the food they need.

That was why all the money raised from this festival – from donations/tickets, food stalls and pumpkin-smashing stalls – would go to the awesome groups delivering emergency food parcels in Phnom Penh.

According to whatsonphnompenh.com