A Dream Come True

 Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. One of the more difficult experiences we have here in Cambodia is doing homes visits to the families of students that are in our Smart Kids education program, in a very poor brick factory area. Many of the families we visit need decent housing. The conditions they live in are incredibly sad, with dirt floors, inferior walls, and leaky roofs.

Each year we decide who and how many families we can build new houses for. The principal of the primary school and K.I.D.S. Smart Kids English teacher/ manager decide which families are in the most desperate need. This past year we were able to build 5 houses for families.

This year one of the families we visited is a grandmother, who is 68 years old and has lived most of her life in the brick factory, in a shack, where she still works carrying and making bricks to this day. Her husband died many years ago and she is raising her grandson while her only daughter works in another town for poor wages to help the family. If you work and live in the brick factory you cannot build a new house, as the factory houses workers in very poor conditions and charges them to live there. Over the years the daughter and grandmother scraped together enough money to buy a small lot of land outside the factory but cannot afford to build on it for several more years, if ever. Thanks to the kindness of KIDS donors we are going to be able to build a house for this hardworking woman, her daughter and her grandson. This past year we also helped them with a stipend and food as the brick factories were closed for quite a while during Covid

We visited some other families we are able to build houses for. While we build the houses they often live basically outside, under a tarp, but they never complain because they are so happy to have a new home. We have a great team of local builders and thanks to K.I.D.S. they have been able to work through most of Covid.

Your generosity and support have changed many families' lives forever, by giving them a decent house to call HOME.

Take Care and all the very best to you and yours,
Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick

Girls Taking Flight

 Dear Friends,

Today is International Women's Day, a day we recognize the achievements of women and how far they have come in the fight for their rights within the political, cultural, and social spheres. It is also a day to recognize how hard women have worked to overcome, abuse, poverty, gender inequality and to honour how they have worked tirelessly to break the cycle of poverty and strive for a better future.

Bringing education to girls and young women is essential to breaking the cycle of poverty. K.I.D.S. has helped many girls and young women to get an education through our K.I.D.S. Education Programs and supported them with post-secondary education. Most of the mothers of the girls we have supported, over the years, have never had the opportunity to go past primary school if they even had the chance to go to school at all, many are illiterate.

Phai and Sophorn grew up in orphanages and came to live at K.I.D.S home for girls when they were young. They are sisters and are now in their last year of university, they have both held good jobs while going to school. They are happy and their futures are bright! 

We met Vanna many years ago. He is a landmine victim and until Covid sold books on the streets of Siem Reap, his wife hand-washed laundry to help support their two daughters. K.I.D.S. has helped his daughters with their education and this year it was a happy day for the family when we registered the twins for accounting college. In the future, they will help their parents and ease their difficult lives.

All the girls we have supported through K.I.D.S. education programs have worked very hard and never taken their education for granted. They know that this is their opportunity to break free of a life of toil and hardship.

Sara and Yen are two of many girls and young young women who are in our Smart Kids education program. Their parents work very hard laboring in brick factories for very poor wages. They had already started working as young girl's till K.I.D.S. sponsored them for primary school, high school a vocational training program and now for university business management. They would be illiterate and more than likely be mothers few times over by their early twenties but not for your generosity and support.

These are just a few examples of how collectively we have brought education to girls and women. Over the years we have witnessed the difference we have all made in the futures of these girls. It is heartwarming to hear and see them becoming teachers, managing restaurants, working in companies and now having of their own children by choice.

This picture was drawn by one of the girls in K.I.D.S. Farm School education program, it was on the wall of the classroom under the teacher’s house where 60 kids come to study English each evening. Thank you for making many girls' dreams of education come true and helping girl's and women take flight through education.

Until Next Time,

Adrianne and Rick

Classrooms for kids from K.I.D.S.

 Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. We recently had the pleasure to be able to visit the kids at Wat Sela school and see them happily studying and learning in the new classrooms that K.I.D.S. was able to build over this past year.

When we were here last, we often met students in our Smart Kids English Education program in an old run-down wooden classroom.

The principal, Mr. Sokha, and K.I.D.S. Smart Kids program manager Hak were telling us that the school was overcrowded and that they could really use more classrooms and a library so more children could attend school and children could have a place to read books at their pleasure.

We had the old school torn down and hired the local builders we always use to build three new classrooms.

It was so heartwarming to visit the kids in the new classrooms and see them studying and reading books in the new library.

Now more children can work at getting an education rather than having to labour in brick factories. Education changes lives forever and builds better futures. Thanks for making this dream come true for the teachers and the students!!!

Until next time,
Adrianne and Rick