A donchee (Khmer: ដូនជី) is a pious Eight- or Ten Precepts-holding anagārikā laywoman residing in a pagoda in Buddhism in Cambodia, where bhikkhuni (nun's) lineage is not officially recognized.
In Burma, an eight precept nun is addressed as thilashin or sayalay, whereas a fully ordained woman is called a rahan-ma ("female monk").
[1] During the tyranny of the Khmer Rouges regime, public practise of Buddhism was forbidden, monks were defrocked and pagodas destroyed or used as granaries, prisons or execution sites.
After large number of widows were left derelict by the massacres of the Khmer population between 1975 and 1979, new donchee communities were formed as shelters.
This center, at the foot of Oudong mountain fifty kilometers North of Phnom Penh, houses roughly 200 nuns.