Market Stall Updates

Sponsored university students

We currently pay for two young men to attend university. Seng Somnang attends uni in the Capitol, Phnom Penh and Sok Mong is a student at Life University in Sihanoukville. Sok Mong is doing really well with his studies and passes all of his subjects except Christianity. Why do they study Christianity when they are Buddhists? When we asked Mong he said it was just part of his course but didnt know why. 

Somnang is having difficulty with English so we are investigating extra classes for him. He is very excited and grateful to be given the opportunity. We are hoping he'll benefit from the classes and improve his marks because if he fails the English component he fails the whole course. 

Seng Somnang

Market Stall

Stall setup at Nymboida Hall

Handmade button jewelry donation (Ann Maraldo)

The local market stall is really on a roll with all proceeds going to the organisations we support. However it is sometimes difficult to find time to have a stall at every market. If there are any Nymboida locals who would like to contribute by helping us by either manning a stall from time to time or even to donate excess home grown produce, home made baked goods, home made jams pickles etc that we can sell, we'd love to hear from you.

Donors

We have several wonderful people who have set up regular donations into the fund raising account. Regular donations allow us to commit to projects that are ongoing.  If we had more regular donations (a few dollars each week or fortnight from several people goes a long way) we would be able to fund more longer term projects in education and health,  our two main priorities.  If you are interested in donating, you can set up a regular funds transfer from your bank account to the fundraising account, details of which are here

Prefer reading this on the website instead ?

Click here to go to the website

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FInancials

Financials

Finally we're up to date with the financials for the period 1 July (were we changed to the new accounting software) to 31 December, for those interested, see below

Profit and Loss

For the tech heads amongst you, we now use the FOSS bookkeeping solution, GNUCASH.  Great for groups like us but a cloud based service would be better

Australian Bank Account

We have redacted the personal information of some of the donors.

Cambodian Bank Account

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Leaving Cambodia and Financial update

Leaving Cambodia

Well, we have decided it's time to leave Cambodia temporarily,. We were sorely tempted to stay indefinitely, the place is so wonderful but a few things need sorting out back in Australia.  Its time we gave our friend Steve back his life after he has put it on hold to look after our property. We need to go back to regroup and replace all our stolen equipment (much of it unable to be sourced in Cambodia) so we are heading back.

It's with a very heavy heart that we leave Cambodia. It is a wonderful place and we're not sure how we'll cope with the plethora of laws and restrictions to personal liberties that seem to be enacted on a daily basis back in Australia. The societal diversity, being used to meeting a dozen different ethnicities when walking down the street, was a wonderful experience.  We have also made friends with many Cambodian locals. Mongs Family cooked a wonderful meal and invited us over to say goodbye.

One of the farewell dinners

Romdual School - Friends group saying thanks

Our friend Heack cooking us Khmer pork ribs - TASTY !

Fruit for Desert ! Dragon fruit & Watermelon

Heack, inspired by the Grigg's girls photos using Poi, nearly knocking himself out ! 

Crying, as I explained to the children (khmeng khmeng) at the Goodwill Centre that I was leaving
and where Cambodia is in relation to Australia

Sokhar, an HIV positive orphan wiping tears from my eyes as I explained to him
I was leaving, I will never think I have a hard life again !

Cambodia is currently an ethnic cornucopia of ex-pats. We met people from all over the globe:  Ireland, England, Sweden, Denmark, USA, Canada, Germany, Finland, Ukraine and on and on but we love the Australian bush and our small 50 acre property with it's low environmental impact  and our wonderful small community at Nymboida, so we're looking forward to being back.

We look forward to seeing all our wonderful friends and acquaintances when we get back and thanking them for their support. Currently we plan to be back into Australia on 9th  November.  We hope to raise more money to help the projects we are funding in Cambodia as we now have a reliable network there to ensure the funds are used wisely and a fee free way to disperse the funds.   We are hopeful we can do a couple of local displays on what we have been doing over here, more on that later.

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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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updates

Financial Updates

Well that time of the month sees the financials having been balanced for the end of the month.  Go to the link on the financials page at the top of the blog if you want to review any of it

Update on Mong's Dad (Keo Sok)

Some of you may remember that Mong's Dad fell from the roof and did himself some real damage, his legs did not move etc  Anyway, he is up and about and thanks to the kind donation of Trevor's family, half of the medical bills were paid for and they didn't have to sell their scooter to pay their neighbor back. The scooter is how Mong makes money as a moto driver to help his family and save for university so it would be a real setback if that had happened.

Mong's Dad  (Keo Sok) on his crutch

It was mentioned that this was an indication about how the plethora of OH&S rules help people in the West but this is not quite true.

OHS catastrophe waiting to happen  

I know two people from Townsville, Australia (my old home town) that fell off the roof of their house while doing work up there. It's more a reflection of a terrible health system here.  Here, Mongs father was put onto the back of a scooter and sandwiched between passenger and driver, driven over a bumpy road and taken to the nearby clinic while unconscious, (no hospital here in Sihanoukville) they stabilised him and then a private taxi was hired by the family and he was transported to Phnomn Penh for five hours in the back of that taxi... in Australia an Ambulance would have been called and transported to the nearest hospital... but enough of that, the great thing is he is getting better every day !

Another wedding

Mongs elder Sister invited Toni to her wedding, the new kitchen was put to good use to prepare the celebratory feast .

Wedding feast preparations

Ducks being killed and prepared !

Theft update

As per the last blog post all our camera gear and computers have been stolen, so we will only be able to post very sporadically when we can get access to loaner equipment. None of the equipment has been recovered and it is very doubtful it ever will and yes we were drugged, apparently the modus operandi is they send in a small child to hold a cloth with a knockout chemical under you nose, you breath it in, knock you out and they then go about robbing you, stuff was scattered everywhere, which was why we had no idea how we could not have been woken up.  The tell tale sign being the horrendous headache the next day we both suffered, to all those out there that though my snoring must have been the reason ! 

I had just got the okay from an art Gallery back in NSW to do a portrait exhibition when I returned back to Australia and I had everything organised to start the shoot here, so not being able to do that is very disappointing as well.

Interestingly, I was trying to justify the theft as "they are really poor so I can kind if understand it" to a Khmer friend.  He said "I am very poor and I never steal, they are bastards !"  I guess he was right... and yes he is very poor, we have been to his house, it is not much better than our chicken house at home.  

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Finances and updates

Financial Update

A new bank statement is out, we get one every six months,  you can check them all out here if you are so inclined.

I have also streamlined all the financial information and put it in one location.  You may have noticed a new link in the title bar called "Finances" some of the more switched on among you will have twigged that's where the Financial Information is. ... a little Khmer humor there, I don't get it either !

More updates

We decided to help out a little with this family that lost their mother and father a couple months ago, the one where the Grandmother is looking after the four kids as well as working to support them.  We spent a little of the Funds money; bought them 1/2 a bag of rice, some tinned fish (no electricity and no refrigeration of course), cooking oil, some toothpaste for the kids (Grandma's teeth have completely fallen out and they can't afford dental services of course).

Donated funds spent helping a destitute family.

They were incredibly grateful and thanked me profusely, so I am thanking you guys at home for your donations, without them we couldn't help out over here.  Of course this is but a tiny sample of the many people in similar circumstances.

You may have noticed the little "raised" veranda out front, nearly all homes have them as in the wet season, the ground is muddy as hell, so this gives them a dry place to sit out of the rain and mud. It's often also the equivalent of a lounge/dining/sitting room in western households.

Sok Mong's Family

Mong's Dad arrived back from Phnom Penh, he can move his arms and legs and urinate, none of which he could do before he left, so we're hopeful of a recovery.  Having to pay a full years wages for medical care has put a dampener on things of course.  We chipped in using the Donations to pay for the initial visit to the local clinic (US$165) but feel we don't have enough funds to spend much more helping out.  We are trying to talk them out of selling their old scooter, Mong raises money for the family when he is not at school by being a "moto taxi", as well as using it to get his Dad to work and to buy supplies from the market etc  they currently have a short term loan from a "loan shark", few options are available.

We also decided that seeing Mongs family have had to spend an entire years salary on his Dad in hospital we would help out in the very short term and bought them some food to help them get by, 

(L) Sok Mong and his mother. 

they still have to pay rent, buy food etc and the main source of income (Dad is laid up)... such is life in Cambodia.

Blessing the kitchen

Monk getting prepared

Monks were asked to come and bless the new kitchen. For some reason that I didn't understand they didn't actually do it in the kitchen, but upstairs on the veranda.  The Cambodian version of Buddhism seems very anamist,  so I suspect this was simply a ceremony to ensure there were no "bad spirits" about.  I suppose this is not too far removed from the Christian traditions of having various items blessed by a clergymen and as in the West, some take it more seriously than others.

Monday was, apparently, a fortuitous day, so over they came.  Via an interpreter it was discussed that I was allowed to video the blessing, so I did. Here's the video

For  those of you that receive this update via email, the video will not be embedded, so you should go to the blog and view it there

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