Giving and Receiving

Hi Everyone,

We wish you all a very Happy Holiday Season and hope that you are enjoying time with family and friends. This is the season of giving, receiving and spending time with those we love and care about.

Thanks to your generosity we are able to focus on giving in many different ways here, to support kids and help them and their families to live better, healthier and more equitable lives. We always enjoy connecting with the many young people that K.I.D.S. supports. Our student sponsorship programs focus on education, vocational training and family support. We have over 100 young people taking English lessons, studying at tourism and hospitality schools and working while attending university.



They receive the tools that are needed to be successful and change their future from one of poverty to prosperity and break out of working as child labourers. It is truly heartwarming to see the difference everyone's support has made. One of the best gifts we receive is seeing these great young people doing so well.

One program K.I.D.S. sponsors and recently visited is Sohing's Farm School, where each night poor village students come to learn English under her house. Sohing and her family raise frogs and cows and grow fruit, vegetables and have a rice field. Each week K.I.D.S. provides these hard-working students with nutritious meals, English lessons and educational material. We went for a fun farm walk with some of them and had a great time.




Last post we talked about the teacher who used to teach at Sohing's school and how she sadly died after complications giving birth to her second child. We heard that the father and grandparents were having difficulty paying for formula so we visited them and brought the baby formula as the expense of purchasing it was beyond their means. The baby's father works and the elderly grandparents are caring for the baby and older child. The grandfather is blind and they had to borrow money and also sell all five of their cows to pay for treatment to try and save their daughter's life, this is the second daughter they have lost. As we sat and chatted about their daughter and played with the baby under their basic small, stilted wooden house we found out that even though they are very poor they give rice and sometimes a chicken and any support they possibly can to help poorer children in the village to eat or go to school. It was a truly moving and humbling experience to meet such strong, kind people....who in turn were incredibly grateful to receive support from others and yet still found it in their hearts to share some rice from their field or a chicken or two to help the less fortunate. K.I.D.S. will continue to provide formula and other needs for the baby.

This is one of many stories of resilience and compassion that we experience. We thank you for your kindness and support and are grateful for the incredible people we work with both here and at home.

We wish you and yours much happiness, good health and all the very best.

Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick

Thanks to the Smart Kids in the city for making K.I.D.S. this beautiful tree!!

Fixing the Lake Clinic

Hello Everyone,

We hope that your holiday plans are going well. Not long after we got to Siem Reap, we were asked to go down to the Stung Sen River to assist with refurbishing one of The Lake Clinics that K.I.D.S. partnered with Compassionate Eye Foundation to build 8 years ago. This life-saving program, founded by Jon Morgan, has two teams of dedicated doctors, midwives/nurses, dental hygenist, and support staff to provide healthcare and free medication. They travel in difficult conditions to get to the river and the lake, to serve the underserved. We went to assist a group of great people called "The Fixers". The Fixers is a reality TV show that travels the world assisting programs in developing countries with much needed buildings and infrastructure. This season they chose The Lake Clinic, and in one week, they totally renovated the older clinic, which had been through much intense weather and use. A group of Cambodian village workers, volunteers, and the four Fixer professionals came together to bring the clinic a new life.


Working as a team, we put on a new roof, new solar panels, new walls, a new kitchen and installed new medical equipment, which was totally paid for by "The Fixers"..how great is that!!! Between the actors, film and sound crew, volunteers Cambodian workers, and all the support staff, there were about 40 people swarming on and around the clinic.


We will send out a link for the program when it comes out later this year we might even be in the program, providing we make the cut ha ha. It was a very intense, very fun, and very meaningful experience. The clinical team was thrilled to have a fresh and almost new building and equipment to work with.

Each year K.I.D.S. assists The Lake Clinic in different ways, this year not only did we give support in rebuilding the K.I.D.S. clinic we also raised funds to provide at least one midwife/nurse salary and hopefully two. We see first hand the difference these incredible people make.

Thank You to all K.I.D.S. donors and the Compassionate Eye Foundation in Vancouver for your continued support. Together you not only build clinics, schools, and water projects we also put the people and the resources in them to cure, teach, nurture and improve the lives of vulnerable children and families.

https://www.lakeclinic.org

Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick

Happy International Rights Day from KIDS

Hello Everyone,

We hope all is well with you and yours. The flights here seem to feel a bit longer each year, but the trip went well and the rest in the hotel for a few days was heavenly. We are now back at it and in our little apartment where we have been busy setting up our office and meeting friends, programs and contacts.

Three houses, for brick factory families, got started before we left and are well underway. We have lined up the repairs for a couple of water projects and the drilling of a replacement well for another, in addition we are working on getting two new water projects at rural schools started so thousands of more people will have access to clean water, thanks to you!


It is always an emotional roller coaster coming back with lots of good things to lift the spirits and as always seeing the realities that people face can really make your heart ache. People you meet, students, waiters, vendors and our local friends all have a difficult story. We give them so much credit because behind those amazing smiles, their lives have not been easy, but their drive and resilience is awe inspiring.

Sadly just before we arrived, we lost a young woman who was a teacher at Sohing's Farm School, where 35 students come each day to her home to study English and get a nutritious meal. This excellent teacher was looking forward to the birth of her second child. The baby was born healthy, but sadly the she died a few days later from complications that would not have been complicated at all, had she won the birth lottery and been born in a developed country. K.I.D.S. helped to pay for her funeral, as the family spent and borrowed what they could trying to save her life. As is common here whenever a teacher passes away, their students honour them by attending their funeral.

We also recently visited a small, remote rural school in another province where K.I.D.S. previously installed a clean water drinking system, as the kids and community did not have access to clean water. This year we will provide more solar panels and new filters to the system. The teachers work very hard to educate these students as well as providing them with a nutritious meal each day to help them learn. We also brought new uniforms and school supplies to this remote school. The kids and teachers were all very happy.

Today is International Human Rights Day! We want to deeply thank everyone for caring and bringing essential human rights, such as: health, housing, education and clean water to children and families here.

Until Next Time,
All the best,
Adrianne and Rick