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To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here. Newsletters from Family Care Cambodia For the latest news from Family Care Cambodia, follow links below:
Project CCPCR--Phnom Penh Thmai CCPCR is a Child Protection Shelter that is home to 35 children, mostly girls, between the ages of 5 & 17, who have been rescued from abusive situations or sexual exploitation.
We’ve worked closely with the shelter for the past 3 years, forming a strong bond & friendship with the staff and children, and donated a color TV, VCR machine & set of children’s educational videos & painted bright murals on the garden wall.
Thanks to a grant from Drop in the Ocean, Nottingham UK and Family Care Foundation USA, we were able to construct a second story for the shelter that provided 3 bedrooms for the children & staff, study room, recreation room & 4 toilets. Read the full story.
The downstairs is divided into 2 vocational classrooms, kitchen, office & infirmary.
International volunteers helping to achieve long-term goals Utilizing the help of short-term volunteers visiting from abroad, Family Care Cambodia (FCC) has undertaken new programs in the communities of Phnom Penh Thmai, Sen Sabbay, and Siem Riep. “FCC’s primary focus within these communities is the care, education, health and training of the children of underprivileged families,” share project managers Alex and Ann Soldner. “This is accomplished through weekly classes and activities for the children, as well as our channeling supplies of donated food and clothing to the families. Additionally, we have also launched health and hygiene projects and have organized free medical checkups. Learning to keep clean is essential for these children as sickness and skin disease are rampant throughout the villages.”
In one such project, Swiss volunteer Manuel assisted in planting a vegetable garden for the children of a child protection shelter (which will help supplement the children’s meager diet), while at San Sabbay British volunteers organized special classes and activities for the children. “These activities have become the highlight of the children’s week,” say the Soldners. In Siem Riep we are able to sponsor the salaries of two English teachers for Phom T’nahl School, allowing a total of 200 hundred underprivileged children to be able to attend regular English classes. A major renovation project has been launched inn Sen Sabbay village aimed at assisting needy families in the repair or rebuilding of their simple bamboo or tin houses. Many of these huts belong to elderly couples who have taken over the care of their young grandchildren, often because the children’s parents are sick or have died of AIDS. In these shanty towns entire families often live in one room, often with holes in the wall, a caved in roof or sometimes no walls at all, just sheets, sarongs, old rice sacks or plastic bags hung to keep out the monsoon wind and rains.
"The cost of the simple log, bamboo & thatch building materials works out to about $20-$40 per dwelling, depending on the size and the state of disrepair,” say the Soldners. “In some cases we’re able to repair & in other cases we have to pull the old structure down & start from scratch.” Family Care Cambodia recently signed a Memo of Understanding with the Cambodian government, signaling a greater desire to combine efforts for further humanitarian efforts within the country. Project Sen Sabbay--Sen Srok Settlement Sen Sabbay community in the Sen Srok resettlement village, just outside of Phnom Penh, is home to hundreds of displaced families. Most of these people were living in abject poverty as squatters in the capital city, having migrated in from the provinces due to drought, crop failure, & starvation.
We’ve repaired &/or completely rebuilt dozens of houses for the poorest families & organize free medical check-ups by local doctors, providing the needed medication for middle-aged & elder people.
With donated soap & shampoo, we organize hygiene classes where village children get anti-lice treatments. Children are also treated for skin rashes, open sores & cuts, thanks to the help of a volunteer nurse & pharmacist.
Basing out of a tin shed in the community, we’ve been holding weekly classes & activities for 40-100 of the village children which includes reading, writing, English, health & hygiene, music, story time, moral instruction, games, learning activities, sports & art classes. We channel literally tons of donated food, clothing, shoes, toys, school supplies & household items to the poorest families. Scholarship program--Phnom Penh/ Siem Riep Presently, we’ve maintained scholarships for orphans from Kulap-4 to attend Western International School. This includes arranging daily transportation for 11 year old Det Srey Leak, from CCPCR, to attend special school for the deaf & dumb.
In Siem Riep, we’re also providing tuition for 11 year old Nguyen Cam, to attend special school for the deaf & dumb, along with sponsoring 6 poor students at Phnom Thnarl Primary School. Project Phom Thnarl--Siem Riep Phom Thnarl is a free school for abandoned children and children from impoverished families in the province of Siem Riep. There is a shortage of classrooms & the ones available are very rough & basic, without electricity, lights or fans. We’ve built a teacher’s office for record keeping & student counseling, sponsored the salary for English teachers who provide daily English lessons for 200 children & host an English Camp for 100 students, teaching 5 different workshops. In partnership with Singapore Entrepreneur’s Organization, we conducted a major renovation of a large classroom into an English study room & computer lab. This included installing electricity, ceiling, overhead fans, & lights, partitions, & new windows.
We furnished the classroom with study tables, computer desks & a teacher’s desk, 50 stacking chairs, supply cupboard, TV stand, posters, white boards & educational materials! 10 computers were donated for the student study lab, one computer for the teacher’s office & 2 to the District Education Office.
We had first visited Phom Thnarl School when on a free dental mission to Siem Reap. While treating 600 elementary students, from poor families, we noticed one building that was in shambles. The structure was built from scrap wood & old beams, rotted from years of heavy rains, & patched together with spare boards & blocks. It looked like an old shed, but was actually the school house for the youngest students. Three classrooms of 1st & 2nd graders, seated 2 or 3 per desk, were learning to read, write & count with bold enthusiasm! There was only a dirt floor, which we knew would be a big mud puddle during the monsoon. The teachers confirmed that the rain often came in through the leaking roof & the gaps in the sideboards.
Over the next 2 years we made regular visits to provide what assistance we could, always hoping to rebuild this schoolroom for the youngest children. But that was easier said than done! We had to get the director’s approval; although in a school with many education needs, the smallest kids weren't on the priority list. We needed permission from the city land officials to build anything & authorization from the provincial head of education. Village elders & commune chiefs had to be consulted as well. We also had to come up with the thousands of dollars necessary to carry out the actual construction.
We wondered if we’d ever reach the goal! But we tried to respond to the needs as they presented themselves, while keeping the larger goal in mind. So we began with supplying new uniforms for all of the children, then a teacher’s office, then sponsoring teacher salaries for English classes, then creating the abovementioned computer lab, installing electricity, hosting an English camp, & building bathrooms. We also built up a rapport with local officials and learned a lot about provincial construction work in the process.
At that stage, an old friend wrote to say she wanted to donate a large sum to help poor children and asked if we knew of a worthy project! We quickly called a contractor to estimate the job. In the process, he notified us that the old roof could not last more than 2 months before it would collapse! Thank God we didn’t give up on the project-a close call! Construction began immediately & on October 27th, the opening ceremony was held. The Governor, Regional head of Education & other local elders honored us by participating.
The school was lauded as a “pilot project” for the region, due to the improvements & training programs we’d initiated. One official said, “Foreigners often help build a school, then leave, & the project fails because there is no further training, no teachers, no program. But you stick with us & see things through & we are grateful!”
We continue to make regular trips to Siem Riep to bring school supplies, food, clothing & other necessities to the students from the poorest families.
Children’s Book Project--Phnom Penh/ Siem Riep There are so few Cambodian language children’s books available in schools, libraries or shops here in Cambodia. So, in cooperation with volunteers in Japan, we translated & printed a full-color children’s story book with Khmer & English text. The story is of a Garden where the plants learn a lesson about being content and realizing that they are each valuable, special & needed in their own way—a very important message for the children here.
We also perform a motivational drama depicting the story, clown show & magic show, after which copies of the book are distributed for free to children at Toul Kork Primary School, Sen Sabbay resettlement village, CCPCR child protection shelter, Sen Srok Primary School, the National Pediatrics Hospital, Phnom Thnarl Primary school, as well as schools & orphanages in the provinces of Kampong Thom, Kampong Cham & Koh Kong.
To read more about what Family Care Cambodia has accomplished, click here. To donate to this Family Care Foundation Project, please note Project NAME and then click here.
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