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Family Care Cambodia Activities:
“Family Time” Training for Orphans Each week, we host a group of 20-plus orphans to attempt to envelop them in a family atmosphere for a full morning of activities. These children range in ages from 9 to 16 & all have been abandoned.
Providing these children with the loving support of a family goes a long ways in their emotional & intellectual development. We believe it is crucial for them to them know that they are special to someone; that the things they do matter & thus are worth doing well.
We include these kids in our family circle, along with our own children, & provide them with opportunities to receive training & learn skills that can improve their future as well as their immediate environment in a tangible way. Such training includes hygiene, sewing, arts & crafts, recycling projects, gardening, singing, public performing, computer & English.
We also provide the youngsters with a healthy, balanced meal and snacks each week & provide clothing, school supplies & other materials regularly.
Renovation
of Kulap 4 Orphanage
This included painting the rooms, sewing curtains for each of the bedroom dormitories & providing a mattress and sheets for each of the 45 residents & staff. -- The very first they've ever had!
The orphans themselves participated in each step of the renovation; learning how to do sanding, enamel work, painting trim & using rollers, and measuring & cutting cloth, sewing curtains by machine & finish work by hand. What was once a dilapidated institution, in a state of disrepair due to lack of personnel & funding, has now been transformed into a tidy, attractive home. This project also helped the children to develop their feelings of self-worth and the realization that they have the ability & responsibility to change things for the better by taking a situation and working together to improve it. We also launched health & hygiene training classes with the 45 children from Kulap-4 orphanage, procuring shampoo, soap, conditioner, lice medicine, lice combs & new towels for each child. One time we set up a "home beauty parlor" & treated each orphan to a hair wash & conditioning treatment, blow dry, hair cut & styling.
When first discovering that some of the kids were badly infected with head lice, we administered lice medicine & taught the children how to use lice combs, which we provided for them. The older girls were instructed on how to do the follow up treatments for the younger children. Imagine how good it must feel to NOT have head lice for the first time in your entire life!
Distribution of Food, Clothing & Supplies to Underprivileged Children In order to help meet the immediate physical needs of these institutions & centers that care for the underprivileged, we have an ongoing project to garner food, milk, clothing, shoes, school supplies, educational material, audio/visual material, construction supplies, fabric, computers, sewing machines, & more, partnering with the local business community.
"City Under the Sky" Resettlement Village "City Under the Sky" resettlement village, located about 20 km outside of Phnom Penh, is so named because there are over 5,000 people living here in one-room huts made out of grass, plastic bags, bits of cloth & trash with nothing but the sky overhead.
These people were displaced from the city during road construction projects that tore down their houses & shops. Most have no jobs or must travel many kilometers daily to find even menial work in the city. They are among the poorest we have seen here.
With the help of Khmer speaking friends, we visit each dwelling to find out how many people are living there, and it's not unusual to find an entire family of up to 8 people. On this particular day we distributed 200 pairs of shoes & 100 sets of children's clothing to the family units, as well as offering words of comfort, friendship & hope.
Dental Attention for Cambodian Orphans When one hears of Cambodia, a Southeast Asian country that most of us may know little about, associated terms and past events might come to mind: Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, Killing Fields, Angkor Wat, etc. The sad reality is that Cambodia continues to suffer from its legacy of decades of war and internal strife. Per capita income and education levels are lower than most of its neighbors. Infrastructure remains inadequate. Most rural households depend on agriculture, while manufacturing output is concentrated in the garment-manufacturing sector.
Amidst such conditions, we at Family Care Cambodia direct our efforts to the disadvantaged children. Recently, in partnership with visiting Swiss dental students and a team of Japanese volunteers, we organized a mobile dental clinic which visited 4 outlying provinces, providing free dental treatment and prevention classes for hundreds of children. In one area alone, 350 children were provided with 880 fillings, 184 scalings and 148 extractions over a 4-day period.
We’ve also made weekly arrangements local orthodontists to bring in groups of orphans for dental check-ups & treatment at much reduced rates. The university clinic is brand-new with all of the latest equipment, very hygienic, and the dentists have been kind and gentle with the children, explaining every step of the treatment and comforting them throughout the procedures.
The kids being treated range in age from 9 to 20 years old. Most have never been in a dental chair, let alone had their teeth cleaned or attended to! But boy, do they need it! Poor things, many have teeth in really bad shape, rotted or riddled with cavities! One would have never guessed what was behind the sweet, cheery smiles that so attract us to dedicate our time and efforts on their behalf! We have presented motivational programs for hundreds of children in poor schools & institutions, in the process creating a fun atmosphere for these youngsters who have so little, & putting a smile on every face!
We organize group games with prizes & treats for all, & have interactive songs & friendly loveable clowns performing meaningful & hilarious skits, making it a day to remember!
Christian Training & Education Program Our Christian training & education is expanding, as are our weekly character building classes and Bible studies for those who are interested.
Following the Biblical principle of teaching others to teach others to teach others (2 Tim. 2:2), a primary focus of this program is providing our students with the materials & training to reach out to & help others as they have been helped.
Thanks to a grant from Family Care Foundation, we were able to produce and launch a Vietnamese-language website.
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