Stueng Hav completion

Stueng Hav

The outdoor enclosure at the Stueng hav center, which we part funded has finally been completed. The children now have a safe and dry area to play, study and learn out of the torrential tropical rains of Cambodia. There was an opening ceremony with local dignitaries and parents in attendance. The children received certificates and gifts from the Village Chief. M'Lop Tapang, who we have mentioned many times in past posts, performed a dance for the occasion. You can read more about the excellent work being done in Steung Hav.  For those if you who receive this blog update via email, you will need to click through to the web page to view the photo slideshow.

Poor village families receive food parcels

Jen, the Goodwill Center Manager and Kolab, one of the teachers, are continuing to donate their spare time to arrange food parcels for some of the poorer village families. We thank you many times over for your efforts. 

Romdual School

There are plans underway to return to Cambodia with two generous friends who support this school by paying the wages of one of the teachers. The new teacher travels 2 hours a day on his scooter to give the children their lessons which is only possible because of Jen and Richards help.   We also maintain the organisations website and other administrative duties to help ease the load. 

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keeping on, keeping on

Keeping on, keeping on

We have been busy getting our "back to Australia" life on track, we have a few ideas for presentations etc that we will get around to implementing after Christmas.

A huge thanks to Jen in Sihanoukville at the Goodwill Center for continuing with some of the work by disbursing funds to help. Another recent food drop was undertaken.  This goes to people who are desperately poor and short of everything, food being the most urgent.

Produce 

Speaking of food, we recently had a surplus of veggies from our small farm. Way in excess of what we could eat and more than we could give away to our helpful neighbors, so an opportunity to sell the excess was available at the Nymboida Night Market. Its a regular affair held through the day usually but a special twilight market was organised.  A huge thank you to John and Jenny Spencer for selling the produce on our behalf, and to everyone that purchased it and a huge thank you to Steve for growing the food, he had planted it all in our gardens when he was minding our property,  so when we got back the garden was lussshhhh with produce...  I had another commitment that evening that I needed to attend to, John and Jenny raised $40 that will go to the Fund.

Our produce for sale

University

As some of you may remember, we have sponsored Sok Mong to go to University, recent expenses include his new uniform, here he is "modelling"it for us, looking very spiffy.

Sok Mong

Financials and donations

As ever the financials are being kept up to date and as transparent as we can make them, they can be accessed here and if you do feel inclined to donate, the information is here

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Still getting stuff done

Food Aid

A huge thanks to Jen from the Goodwill Center for helping continue some of the projects we had set in place in Sihanoukville.  Long time readers may remember we have opened  bank account in Cambodia and put funds in it and given the ATM card to Jen to help with the work.  Last week she was continuing our food project that helps the poorest families survive and send their kids to school.  How does it work ? The parents are so poor that they keep their children at home to help with chores in the small business to help them survive. They need to choose food over education in really extreme cases. We give them the occasional food aid parcel to take the stress off them but only if they allow the kids to attend the Goodwill Center and continue their extra English and Computer classes.

Happy !

Back in Australia

Well, we have been back in Australia for two weeks now. That is taking some getting used to and we are both finding it difficult to adjust in different ways. We plan to catch up with as many locals as we can to say Thank you for their support and give them some thank you gifts. We also plan to keep raising funds to make sure the projects we are involved in can keep going, particularly the support for Romdual School, The Goodwill Center and various small community projects.  Anyone who wants to keep giving, give until it hurts ha ha ! 'cause over there, many do hurt.

For those interested, you can follow our Australian experiences on our small 45 acre property here

Our cottage in the bush, in Australia

You can add subscribe by adding your email address in the area that looks like this

part way down on the right hand side of the blog.

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School Supplies and Finances

School Supplies

One of the projects we have been working towards for a few weeks is getting more of the poorest children to go to school.  Toni has been working with Kolab, one of the Staff at the Goodwill Centre to help identify some of the poorest children.  These are often the ones who have everything against them, losing one or both parents is typically the major contributor.

While the Goodwill Centre does a great job of providing care for children in the community and access to materials and facilities they would never see elsewhere and access to free English language and Computer classes for anyone in the village who wants to improve themselves, the children still have to go to Khmer public school.  One of the requirements to go to school is they must wear a school uniform.  Some have no chance of affording that, so we identified six at risk children who have stopped going because of that and went on a small shopping trip to provide them with two uniforms, a backpack and minor supplies like pencils, books etc.

Kolab with the kids at the local Phsar (market)

In the "change room". measuring up

Everyone into the Tuk Tuk to go back to the Goodwill Center

Back at the Goodwill Center for the obligatory group shot

All up we spent $126 and look at their smiles.

This is one of the things about being here on the ground and forming relationships in the community, you are actually able to help and by maintaining those relationships, continue helping and monitoring into the future. We  don't have to go through a variety of middleman, all taking their legal cut, you don't have to deal with bureaucracy, you just get things done, immensely satisfying but impossible if we had not had the help of all you guys back in Australia, giving donations, thank you so very much.

Changing the Finances

Knowing we were eventually coming back to Australia, we have been struggling for some time to come up with a solution on how best to enable the continual use of the funds.  Transferring money from Aus to Cambodia is expensive, often the fees involved are more than the money itself. The donation money going to Bankers seems a poor use of funds, as does us paying for it personally.

Canadia Bank Account: Cambodian Donations Account

The solution we have come up with is to open a bank account here in Cambodia and transfer the majority of the remaining funds. We then attached an ATM card ($6 fee over here as most don't use them) and leave that with a trusted local,  Jen Hoggett.   Jen is a long term English expat. We met Jen when we first came here and taught English with her at the school in Wat Otres. Jen has been volunteering at the Goodwill Center for over a month and is well respected in the community. We have complete faith in Jen.  We have contacted all the local groups we have dealt with and advised them that if they have projects etc they want funded they are to contact us via email. If we think their project is worthy, we will advise Jen of the amount via email and Skype, she will then withdraw the money from the ATM and they will give her receipts/invoices etc that will be copied electronically and sent to us.

We decided to do this, as from the outset, the money is supposed to be there to help the peoples of Cambodian.  The Cambodian banking system is still quite "old school", yes they have Passbooks and electronic banking is a far away dream, it's probably akin to the Australian banking system in the 1980's. The bank we used is Canadia. We hope everyone agrees this is the best solution ?

In that respect we added the details of the new bank account to the Financials Page, go there if you want more info.

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Streets, desks and death

Monthly Reconciliation

That time of the month again, the "books" have been balanced.  You can see whats going on by going to the Financials Page if you're interested.

Desk for Romdual School

The first desk for Romdual School has been built, we have committed $320 to funding the purchase of 10 desks and helping fund the salary of $70 a month for the new teacher, our commitment there is $10 x 12 =$120.   All in US Dollars.

School desks

The builder will be on a roll from here and have them knocked out in no time.  For those of you new to the blog, the school is a tiny affair in the rural area on the outskirts of Sihanoukville, on the Ream Rv.

Whale Shark

A Khmer friend of ours called us up, saying there was a "big dolphin... very big dolphin" down at one of the local fishing villages. We had a couple hours free, so we jumped in his tuk tuk and headed off, mildly intrigued but knowing this was not going to be a "Seaworld" or Disney type experience.  After some zigging, a lot of zagging and much cursing as my tailbone was shoved up through my spine on the rough road.  We parked up and trekked through a maze of small alleyways...  I spotted it lolling lifelessly against the peer and new instantly what it was, an immature whale shark, tied up to the side of the pier, being butchered.

All in all I found it pretty confronting but then observing the abject poverty of the locals on the way there, it's very understandable. To them this is enough food to feed many families.

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