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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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