Visit from Mira Scholars Team

1.       January 25^th, Family Care Cambodia hosted a visit from 4 members of the Mira Scholars team. Mira Scholars has raised funding to sponsor uniforms and a student teacher’s salary for our volunteer village school, and to install internet for our IT training program at a Rescue Shelter. On this visit the team accompanied us to Kampong Speu province to a volunteer village school where they assisted in a creative arts class. 

We went from there back to Phnom Penh Thmey where we spent the afternoon with the girls at CCPCR rescue shelter. Mira Team member, Antonia, led a beading workshop. The girls learned how to make lovely bracelets, hair clips and necklaces from beads and wires. It was great fun and the finished products were immediately put to use! We are continuing to train a small team of the older girls in making chains and beaded jewelry which hopefully can serve as a vocational skill and potential source of income in the future. Many thanks to Sara Ortega and the Mira Scholars!

In house uniforms for sheltered girls

     Ann Soldner writes….Having decent clothing for everyone to wear is always a huge need at a girls’ rescue shelter. Recently, with the proceeds from the sale of cuddle toys and cloth, handmade by the girls at the rescue shelter, we were able to purchase cloth for pants and blouses. During vocational training time, the girls designed, cut and sewed a new outfit for each resident! Some of the more experienced seamstresses made their own unique blouse designs. The results were lovely!

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Rural Education Update:

Family Care Cambodia sponsors teachers in our rural education program located at Phum Thnal Primary school in Siem Reap. Recently, Alex Soldner and wife, Ann, visited the school to meet with our staff of trainers and to award certificates to the students who completed their training course in Computer and English classes.

Soccer competitions

 Family Care Cambodia has organized sports training and both boys and girls soccer teams at a Siem Reap primary school. February is traditionally the month for competitions between the schools that have teams. Alex Soldner, Family Care Cambodia project manager, traveled to Siem Reap for the matches! It’s always an event the students look forward to. Besides the excitement of the actual competition, the students learn so many valuable life skills such as teamwork, leadership, good sportsmanship, camaraderie and how to handle success and failure. The old adage comes to mind, “It’s not about whether you win or lose, but how you play the game”. We’d like to especially thank the Harvey family for their sponsorship of the rural sports training program!  

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Hygiene Supplies for CCPCR

In January, we received a shipment of hygiene supplies for CCPCR from the Singapore office of Blessings in a Bag, these included much needed items such as new towels for each girl at the shelter, shampoo, and toothpaste. This greatly helped our ongoing aims of upping the hygiene standard in CCPCR, and was happily received by all the girls in the shelter, and by welcome relief from the houseparents, as the girls especially needed new towels.

Life Lesson from a Child of the Streets

Family Care Cambodia project manager, Ann Soldner, writes, “I've begun keeping my car glove-compartment stocked with small bags of crackers, nuts and chips. When poor children approach at a traffic light to sell flowers or beg, I give them a snack to eat. They always break into a big smile, move off of the road and eat the snack straightaway. I know it won't be "taken" by their handlers like money would be, and I'm sure they're hungry most of the time.
The truth is that my resolve to do this came from a sad failure. One day at sunset, I had no snacks in the car and no money in my wallet. At a stoplight a little boy of about 7 years, went down a line ...of 5 cars offering flowers. Each driver ahead of me shook their heads or shooed him off with a wave of their hands. When he came to my car, I looked in his eyes and shrugged sympathetically for not having anything to share. He stopped and leaned his little forehead on my side window. We just looked in each other’s eyes as the seconds passed. It was kind of spiritual in that I could somehow sense, though no words were exchanged, that he was cold, hungry, tired and worried that he might get a beating if he didn't get some donations before nightfall. I really understood this and my heart went out to him. I guess my return gaze must have shown this to him somehow. Then his eyes welled up and tears trickled down his little cheeks. As the light turned green, he stepped back on to the narrow medium strip, turned his face so people wouldn't see his tears and wiped his eyes. I promised God that so long as I had food in the house for my family, I would always take something with me to share with His hungry children wherever I might find them. Ï was profoundly moved by this lesson in life, learned from a child of the streets!

Garden Transformed at Rescue Shelter.

From January 16^th – 23^rd, Family Care Cambodia was delighted to welcome the Australian “Giving Gardens” team who came to landscape the grounds at the CCPCR rescue shelter.....an event we've been eagerly looking forward to for a year! Our work crew was heading by Lana Campbell & her team, along with most of shelter girls and staff,  Ann, Alex and James Soldner,  and Cambodian student volunteers. We leveled 2 truckloads of sand and set up a playground, sand-play pit, playhouse and volley ball net. We leveled 3 truckloads of rubble for a driveway, built several trellises and planted passion fruit, pomegranate, dragon fruit, fence trees, flowering trees, & flower beds, garlic, onions and herbs, a variety of organic vegetables, cantaloupe, watermelon, banana trees, papaya trees and lime tees!

Besides the items mentioned before, everyone received two days of training in making organic compost, compost tea and other aspects of organic gardening. We also hired some local laborers who built a thatched garage to part bicycles and motorcycles. It was fantastic!

For me, Ann Soldner, there were 2 particularly memorable events from the project. The first was driving many kilometers outside of Phnom Penh with shelter nurse, Ms. Sokra, to source such special materials as rice stalk hay, fresh cow dung, and good thatch panels to make a roof! We had only a vague idea of where we might find these items and were so excited to be driving along and see a haystack by the side of the road and find that the villager would bag it and sell it to us for a good price! Once we ordered large bags of hay, cow dung and hundreds of thatch panels, the only delivery service we could find was a kindly old gentleman with a horse and cart. He willingly made the long journey from the outer villages to the Phnom Penh rescue shelter not once, but twice! 

The other highlight was purchasing a couple of bags of brightly colored sand toys to add to our little sand pit that we piled up from the construction sand, and ringed with large cut logs for seating. I knew the girls had probably never experienced a sandbox or playing in the sand at the beach, and I wasn’t sure if they’d like it or think it kind of strange or too childish. As it turns out, the sandpit and toys were the source of great joy and the girls have been using it constantly!

We are truly grateful to Lana Campbell, Marty, Jennifer, Chan, Vannary and the “Giving Gardens” team for this most wonderful gift and investment in the future for our shelter girls!

 Fun on the slide

Organic farming expert gives a lecture

Trellis maze of passion fruit vines

 

Last Stop For 2011: Seim Reap

Our last project for 2011, was in Siem Reap, December 26th-29th, at the Phum Thnal Primary school. Our education program provides salaries for 4 teachers who run English, computer and sports classes for 200 students. English teacher, Saken, organized BIG group games outdoors with James, while computer teacher, Thoeun, and Ann organized games in our English classroom for groups of 30 students at a... time. It was merry chaos and A LOT of fun!!! After we laughed until we couldn't anymore, Alex presented each of the children with a Christmas gift bag. Many thanks to dear friends and sponsors who provided the items in the gift bags....Dee Mea for the hats and T-shirts, Frankie Yee of GoodHill Trading for the snacks, & Thai Hove of PBC for the notebooks, pens and pencils. You put a smile on many young faces!

Watching from the sidelines

Snacks

Pull harder!!

Alex handing out gifts

 

Village Christmas

Still backtracking a bit with good news from December... on the 22nd we travelled to the remote village of Duk ahn Doang, Kampong Speu province to visit the little one room school house where 40 children eagerly awaited our arrival. We started off with a special Christmas lunch of "Pate Baguette" sandwiches, a local favorite, salad, juice and fresh fruit. This was followed by a song and poetry presentation by the children. We then presented a flannelgraph story of the first Christmas...a special feature for Christmas each year. Fun games followed and then distribution of gift bags for each child. Besides the gift packs we brought 4 kites for the children to share. As we left the village, groups of children wearing their pink caps were happily flying their kites!

Opening gift packs

"Let's go fly a kite!"

Children enjoy lunch

Kid's performance