Q4 2021 Newsletter
We ended 2021 in Cambodia on a positive note as normal life, as we used to know it, slowly returned to some sense of semblance. With the reopening of schools and lifting of stringent covid restrictions, students are now able to continue with their all important education and to socialise with school mates and neighbourhood children.
Be sure to read to the end of this newsletter because we will be letting you know of the great impact your kindness and contributions have done to improve the lives of children in our Community School.
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We continue to offer help to the wider community whose members included children whom were adversely affected by the pandemic. We provided food assistance to the Khmer Cultural Development Institute (KCDI), a local charity NGO in Kampot Town dedicated to the care of disadvantaged children and the preservation of Cambodian traditional arts. We subsidized KCDI's food costs for the orphans and funded a Soup Kitchen project handled by the staff and the children of KCDI to provide free meals to the poor and hungry in the town.
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WASH
Sixty units of Water Purification Systems (WPS) were ordered and installed in the last quarter of 2021. With water tanks previously installed by us to collect and store water, we are able to progressively complete integrated water supply systems which would otherwise not be available to allow students in school to have access to clean and safe drinking water that comply with WHO and Cambodian standards. We also delivered new water dispensers to the schools where the WPS were installed. These containers are used to collect water from the WPS and placed in classrooms.
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Dental
We remain the only NGO which provides free dental care to the largest number of students in Cambodia through our four dental clinics including a mobile clinic. Each year, over 20,000 children are able to receive dental care, preventive dental medicine and oral health education which together goes a long way towards improving the physical wellbeing of these children. In order to help improve dental care for the community, we provided the opportunity for 13 dental nurse students from Kampot Regional Nursing School to do their practicum at our clinics as part of their training requirements.. We were able to share our extensive experience with these trainees who gained a good understanding of the types of dental treatment which we are able to provide in rural towns where dental care is severely lacking.
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Anglungkuki Community School
In addition to classes in English and Khmer, we continue to provide holistic education and inculcate social skills to our students. Children are trained on how to undertake gardening activities by cultivating vegetables from seeds, use of compost as natural fertiliser and harvesting the produce. The children were very excited to bring home the ripen vegetables.
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As part of the student's school curriculum, the teachers are able to give insitu garden biology lessons by having the students taking daily measurements of plants and explaining the need to care for the environment along with learning the ill effects of climate change.
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There is a monthly clean up day organised by the school where the children would collect waste and litter from the village surroundings in order to live in a clean environment. It is hoped that the children would then be able to bring awareness to families in the community on the effects of indiscriminate rubbish disposal and to inculcate a sense of social responsibility.
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Our school principal, Sok is also very committed to community development. He contributed his own time and effort in helping with the repair of the access road to the village which was badly damaged by the heavy rains. The poor condition of the roads made riding bicycles difficult for children to cycle to school and for villagers to bring their produce to the market.
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There continues to be much that we can all do, including yourself, if you are wondering. There were kind individuals from Sydney who recently made personal contributions for three young girls of the same family, aged between 5 to 11 in Anglungkuki Village who were just too poor to attend school.
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Now the girls are in our Community School with new uniforms which cost only $25 for the three of them. Besides covering the school uniforms, Naomi, started a group which she calls PitOn (or short for 'Pass It On") is also sponsoring daily free recess snacks of only $1.00 or only $25 a month for the girls. In order to help break the cycle of poverty and to empower the young children with education for a brighter future, PitOn is also providing family assistance of $75 or $25 a month for each child as part of our Keep In School Scheme (KISS).
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Making All That We Do Possible
It does not really cost a lot to help....so, why not give a helping hand and start your own PitOn group to help us keep a child in school? We at YourAid and BLCP promise to deliver 100% of your contribution which would go towards funding our projects for the children of Cambodia. This is possible because we have a primary benefactor who covers all our overheads including our administration costs. While other organisations have fund raising costs, we have none.
Feel free to contact leanlee@youraid.org.au or adrian@youraid.org.au in our Sydney Office if you would like some guidance on your contribution.
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