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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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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more updates

Stueng Hav

Toni went out to Stueng Hav with Thet, from M'lop Tapang (a very large Sihanoukville based charity that do extraordinarily good work with Children) to check how things were going. We have committed to helping fund a covered area for children to use at the main school.  The school and teachers at Stueng Hav are financed by the kind donations of a charitable group from Germany, "Future for Steng Hau" (Zukunft fuer Steng Hau e.V.) as with everyone they struggle with funds and do the best they can.

Construction has started on the extensions funded by "Future for Steng Hau" (Zukunft fuer Steng Hau e.V.) which include a new library/computer room.

"Future for Steng Hau" (Zukunft fuer Steng Hau e.V.)  run a spoke and hub type model, with many smaller classes often under houses and behind small shops in other parts of the village.  The facilites where the classes are run outside the centre are of course very basic.

School-ette under a local house

Painful Truth

Toni was also able to meet with a woman, who has a life threatening stomach problem of some sort (twisted intestine perhaps). She is unable to afford the $4000 surgery needed to save her life, an Operation, that can't be done in Cambodia and needs her to fly to Vietnam. 

Living her last days on a bamboo matt on a concrete floor

She has two children, she is left to live out her life on a bamboo matt, on the concrete floor of the local Wat.  We donated $50 for materials to fix the roof of a building closer to the toilets as she has to be carried there daily by an older woman, who helps the monks care for the lady. Toni gave $20, a small amount of money to buy food, water to live on until she dies in the very near future, what to do, such is life in Cambodia.  We also gave $30 to the Monks to help with expenses in looking after the two children. 

Donation to Monk for child support

Longer term we hope the kids will be moved to Sihanoukville, under the auspices of M'Lop Tapang.  Thank you to the donors back in Aus. for allowing us to help.

English Teacher at Goodwill Center

Our recent 12 month commitment ($32pm x 12mths = $384) to help partially fund a new English teacher in conjunction with HtCC has borne fruit   The classes have started and are well attended.  The Khmer teacher is paid $50 per month for teaching part time, 5 days a week.  He had worked at the Center (yes they use the American spelling of Centre!) before and left to complete his Bachelor of Education.  

The kids love him and the classes are going well. 

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Good Will Centre, Sihanoukville

I decided to use some of the money our Nymboida community had raised to support the wonderful work at the Good Will Centre, particularly the school at the centre which along with post and pre school care is it's main function.  I have committed to them to pay two months of wages for all the teachers.

Teacher wages for the month of April 2012

I had planned to drop the money to the Centre, take a photo and then visit a local village family but Sabine, the Director and Henrick, one of the founders and owner of The Small Hotel', all the kids had come out to say hello, I felt mildly embarrassed by the attention but had a wonderful time there playing with the kids. Thank you everyone for staying back and accommodating me.  One of the most ebullient of the kids is HIV positive, when you find out that sort of thing, it really brings you back to Earth and makes you more appreciative of your own situation.

The children and teachers

A little history

 Henrik started the organisation together with some ladies in England. Actually, before the Goodwill Center was built, someone used to teach English under the neighbour's house. Henrik supported them with notebooks, pens etc., and when Vall Colle who is now the chair of 'Help the Cambodian Children' came to Cambodia as a tourist and stayed at The Small Hotel.  Henrik brought her to see these English classes. That's when they decided to set up a proper charity and build a proper school. This school became The Goodwill Center. Henrik used to be one of the trustees but stepped back from his official position a couple of years ago due to being increasingly busy with his business, The Small Hotel. He is still very much connected to the organisation, and quite some of the donations are coming in through his family and friends and through guests at the Small Hotel.

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