Update September 08

(this is the same text as the email sent September 22nd)

Dear Friends,
I hope your lives are going well, and the rising cost of rice has not forced you to end your children’s education prematurely (or whatever hardship equivalent you may experience in your respective country)!

It has been too long since I sent an update. Too long, because I feel the donors deserve more regular updates, and because too much has happened to write about it all. It’s been 6 months since I last emailed, and it has been the most eventful, productive period in the projects 2.5 year history. We now know how to get things done, and do so on a larger scale. Most notably, we have opened a new school. Read about this on the blog story "Lakeside School" we’ve grown, and we’re working in a new community (and you guessed it, it is on the side of a lake).

The miracle of our existence has coincided with many random acts of kindness with generous donors and volunteers coming and blessing us, as well as some great local partners that have showed up to further our efforts and get results. We now have a desk in an another NGO’s office, Village Focus Cambodia, where the staff can meet and work in an environment less chaotic than the slum. Our staff meetings require a large table for the 10 mostly-part-time staff. We’re still small enough to not be bureaucratic, and our team can make contributions that have a bigger affect. It now feels like the project has a life of its own well beyond my involvement.

What sticks in my mind as I think about the last 6 months is the impact we are making on the students health as we intervene in health issues and education. The stories are numerous of the lives we’ve impacted with medical care, and all of our students have benefitted from our dental program. In June, we started a partnership with a great organization, Cambodian World Family, and in those first 2 months took over 160 students to the dentist. Few had good check-ups, and most had to have extractions and fillings. Watching the extractions, repeatedly, inspired me to get serious about dental health for our students. The problem is a phenomenon of the urban poor, and it is a challenge we are up to and will fight to improve their smiles. Read more on this part of our “school” at the blog entry ‘Medical Services For Cambodia’s Future Leaders’

There are a lot of other stories I have yet to tell, and hope to do so soon. Babies have been born, students got jobs (we’ve now placed 12 students with jobs, which help them to pay for their education in high school or university), and our leadership program has made leaders, who are making a difference every day in their communities. We’ve taken many educational field trips, which have provided precious experiences for myself and the students.

In August we took a bus of 45 students to Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s world heritage temple complex, thanks to some big hearted people at CKF. It was a magical experience, and all the students made it home alive 3 days later, though tired and a bit homesick since some of them had never been away before. On our last day, one of our older students, Savy, who is in a yoga teacher training, led the students in morning yoga atop a temple. After scrambling up hundreds of steeps stairs to the top, all the students were focused and engaged as they sat perched on the ancient stone blocks far above the ground for stretching, breathing, and chanting. Savy, Sela and Tonie teach yoga 2 nights a week in front of Aziza, and it is a program I am proud to say has succeeded and makes a difference for the community on a level that can’t be measured.

One 10 year old student, Da’vid, a rambunctious kid with an aptitude for break dancing, was believed to have had a reading disorder, which was to blame for his repeating the 2nd grade 4 times (yes, 4 times). This year he passed, thanks to our help with providing him a great tutor, Sok Ieng! We will continue to help him as needed, and he is very eager to study, but requires some extra care.

We were in a soccer tournament and won. The kids were really proud!

For all that we do, our operating costs are extremely low. One hundred dollars pays for 20 sick kids to get medical treatment. Seventy five dollars is enough for a class of 20 students to study English for a whole month. Fifty dollars can cover 2 weeks of our primary physical fitness program; aerobics/dancing at the top of Olympic Stadium, which generates more fun than you can imagine, every Sunday. Salaries and rent are extremely low, yet the quality is high and we have many results to show. To all the many who have made this possible, thank you from the bottom of my heart. We now face a time where we need to get more support if we want to keep doing these activities and building strong young people. Please DONATE NOW!

“The way to get things done is to not mind who gets credit for them.” Benjamin Jowett

“We just do.” Drew McDowell

Medical Services For Cambodia's Future Leaders

Cambodia’s problems are overwhelming, so how to decide who should get what? I see that amid the problems, our students are some of the highest achieving poor kids on the planet with a very real chance at a good future. One obstacle is that our students suffer from consistent attacks on their health. So, the need to offer health care for our students seemed like an investment that someone should be making, and so we are. For those of you who donate or are considering donating, close your eyes and imagine a sick child, then imagine the same child feeling well and playing with the other kids, ready to take on life. This is the gift you have given.

Aziza School has a female Khmer doctor, Chenda, coming every week, and Lakeside School has a foreign doctor, Inian, coming each week. We have a part time medical coordinator, Sreang, who is a dental student (and former Aziza student), who’s sole responsibility is to follow up with sick students and all health related issues. Additionally, all the teachers and project manager are focused on improving the health of our students and implementing our programs, with the intention of making an impact. We’ve had numerous local and foreign medical students and professionals coming to volunteer, and look forward to more ‘Barefoot Doctor’ training from Annie this November. Our medical expenses have been averaging about $350 per month, partly from some special cases where we have intervened.

All of our students have benefitted from our dental program. In June, we started a partnership with a great organization, Cambodian World Family. In our first week we took 90 kids there, and I witnessed the horror of what lay inside their mouths. Most kids had at 1-2 permanent teeth that were seriously decayed. After a cleaning, they had fillings, and from there many needed to go to the extraction chair. Even though a tooth may have decay that made it black and reduced to less than half it’s original size, getting it out can be a strenuous pull to get the roots to let go. My nausea from just watching this would make my mouth watery the dentist twisted the tooth back and forth with the dental pliers, eventually getting it to release its long roots. We would comfort them as best we could through this trauma, and follow up to make sure they didn’t have problems afterward, which surprisingly few did.

In those first 2 months we took over 160 students to the dentist, and are still taking them regularly. Their excessive problems are a phenomenon of the urban poor, and it is a challenge we are up to and will fight to improve their smiles. While it seems like an uphill battle with all the sugar they consume, the benefits are clear, with teeth filling in around those that are extracted, relief of pain, and a far greater commitment to brushing as we educate our students and supply them with tooth brushes.

We’ve also done lots of medical testing, check-ups, tetanus shots, de-worming (every 6 months), and lice shampooing. Perhaps the most far reaching and sustainable component of our health programs is the education we do for our teachers and students. We’ve had countless hours of health related trainings in our Sunday afternoon youth program, thanks to Steve, Shanti, Graham and Pat. Chenda, the doctor, is also a teacher 2 days a week, and we will be constantly working to make ‘barefoot doctors’ of our staff and some students, which will serve as the front line for medical needs.

A New School - 'Lakeside School'

Last March was my 2 year anniversary of working in Cambodia, and it was at about the same time that the staff started asking to start another school. For me, it was something I had wanted to do, but finding the time was tough. I had gone to visit other communities in hopes of starting work there in the future, but hadn’t found the right place, which I was finding hard to do.

For our staff, Sokchea, Sokim and Sreang, they saw working in a new community as a new challenge, an opportunity to get more responsibility, paid hours, and job security in the event that Aziza faces problems. They also share the joy of watching children blossom, and we all want to feel the high we have become addicted to, which we get every day from seeing the difference we can make with our students. I initially told them we were too busy, but they persisted, so I asked them to go and find a community, and gave them some criteria for what to look for. I wanted consistent poverty, since much of what I had been finding were slums that have a mix of household incomes. After one long day of the 3 of them searching, dreaming and networking, they returned excited to tell me that they had found the perfect community. I couldn’t believe it myself when I visited, but they had found a community overflowing with dirty, neglected, disrespectful children, gangsters, prostitutes, poor sanitation… An aid workers utopia, and just a short drive from my house!

They also found a small house we could rent for cheap, but I asked them to try to find a larger place. Miraculously, the landlord of the only big house in the area, which is laid out perfectly for a school, was about to evict the current tenants. They pleaded with the landlord to give us discount rent, which she agreed to do ($50 per month), since she is a school teacher and wanted to help the community.

The new community, called Boeung Kok Lake, has more activity than most places on earth. From a side street, you turn down a narrow alley, too tight to get a car into, so only motorbikes or walking will get you there. At the end of the seedy alley there is a steep hill up to some rail road tracks. I’ve only seen the train go by once, and it was loaded with small children playing and catching a short ride as it slowly cranked past. Once over the tracks, it is a steep downhill to the lake, and our school sits right on the edge of the swampy, garbage filled water. I hope that the lake won’t flood again this year and cause us to close the school temporarily. Following the path past the school, the cement turns to wood as the sidewalk and all the houses are on stilts over the water. These are the houses of most of our students. The community is fascinating and beautiful. People fish and grow vegetables in the water, as well as harvest the snails. Life in the water thrives on the sewage that flows directly from people’s houses into the lake. Some of the people have fish farms, while others fish using electric current. The lake is home to some large (2 foot long) eels, which bring a high price.

Now that we had the right house, we sought approval from the authorities. I thought this would be easy enough. The village chief passed us on to the commune leader, and I expected he would be happy to help us, but in fact he didn’t want us there, because another foreigner in a nearby village had been trying to organize the people in the community to fight for their rights and land titles. Luckily Sokchea is a master at listening to people, and after letting him vent his frustrations and making some promises to not be political, we were given approval.

From here, I stepped back and let the staff organize all the logistics. Along with a little help from a beautiful person named Cindy, they interviewed students and families, had desks built, electricity installed, hired teachers, had a blessing ceremony, a party, and started a school. Sounds easy, but it was a lot of work, and they did it like professionals. The greatest achievement will always be their ability to negotiate with the players found in a slum community and the challenges that brings. We were welcomed, and given help from many. The local gangsters are causing us some trouble with noise and disrupting class, and the village chief comes by sometimes when he is drunk, but he is fine so far. The nuances, I believe, are what make work in a developing country effective.

Now the school is in full swing, and we have some students who, if you met them, you may very likely decide to commit yourself to helping them to fulfill their potential. We teach English, Khmer, and will have a leadership training next month. They’ve all been to the dentist, some multiple times (those with a lot of problems), given medical check-ups, and even a few field trips.

Our best resource is our new center manager, Seng, who is a university student studying to be an English teacher, and he lives with his grandfather just a few hundred yards from the school. He is very eager, and values the opportunity to be a leader. He also has worked as an electrician, which is invaluable since we run into a lot of issues with keeping the fans and lights working, as well as power for the computer lab at Aziza School.

What has kept me motivated with my work in Cambodia has been my relationships with the students and their families. Now that we have 2 schools, it is too many kids to keep track of, which has pushed me to use my skills to think about the organization and our infrastructure. I still spend a lot of time in the communities, but my role has slowly evolved, and more of my hands-on work is meeting with the staff and empowering them.

Our little school has a rich history in just a short time, and I feel we are honored to have such great partners in every direction.

It’s a different community, but some of the things are the same. The kids are gorgeous. The problems are everywhere. Our possibilities to help are endless. I look forward to the journey.