The Gift of Education

 Dear Friends,

We hope you all have had a great summer. Fall is definitely in the air and it is the time when students head back to school. Thanks to K.I.D.S. supporters we are able to assist young people to get an education in many ways. K.I.D.S. supports English classes, post-secondary training/education, early childhood education, and computer programs we also build schools and classrooms. Each year we buy as many bicycles as we can and recently we bought bicycles so more students can get to school. Thanks to our great partner Kim Thol and the school principals we are able to assess which students need bicycles and deliver them to the schools we work with...needless to say the students and families are very happy to receive them.

So many rural kids have to walk long distances to get to school and right now in the rainy season it can be very challenging, however, the kids love to go to school so they face these challenges daily, often walking or riding through muddy or dusty and at times flooded roads. Bikes make their lives and access to education so much easier.

K.I.D.S. also buys books and uniforms for students, as many schools or parents cannot afford to supply enough books for children.

Schools in Cambodia are often overcrowded so the schools have to either turn kids away or build poor structures for classrooms; recently K.I.D.S. helped a rural elementary school by building a better classroom for the students. The teachers and students were very grateful to have a cement floor instead of a dirt floor and a roof that did not leak.

We hope the students in your life have a great year and we thank you for supporting education for students in Cambodia. We all know that education changes lives, futures, and the futures of generations to come and is the best way to fight poverty and empower people.

Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick

TLC

Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. Many years ago we volunteered at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We met Jon Morgan, the director of the hospital. Jon told us he was wanting to help the people of very isolated areas of the Tonle Sap Lake. The Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia and serves as home to some of the poorest and most remote villages in Cambodia. Over 1 million people live on and around the lake. The majority of families rely on subsistence fishing for survival and the average family income is $2.50 per day. A lack of education combined with limited access to hygiene and sanitation contribute to a huge burden of preventable diseases. There were no health centers or clinics on the lake when we met Jon.

Together we decided to build the first floating clinic on the lake. Jon found funds for the staff and we raised funds to build the clinic, which was largely funded by Compassionate Eye Foundation. Since that time three more clinics were built and KIDS continues to fund two nurses/midwives yearly as well as help with the upkeep of the clinics. They now have 2 medical teams made up of 5 doctors, 2 nurses, 4 midwives, 1 dental nurse, and cooks who travel weekly through difficult conditions to serve the underserved on the lake and they also go to the Stung Sen River, another very poor area.

The teams travel through the rainy season and the hot season as the lake and the river rise and fall. This drastic change makes travel difficult, extreme poverty discourages families from seeking health care due to the high cost of transport and treatment. The teams stay on the clinics for three days and each week move to different areas of the lake and the Stung Sen River. Having traveled and stayed on the clinics many times we know how challenging the trips can be.

The teams make house calls at villager's homes as well as seeing them at the clinics to save and improve lives as they provide medicine, pre and post-natal care, critical care, dental assistance, and other support services for mental health. One can only imagine how difficult life would be without The Lake Clinic (TLC).

Thank you for supporting KIDS and helping us to support Jon Morgan and this
 incredible team of dedicated people.
Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick

Early Childhood Education

 Dear Friends,

In the poor northern province of Stung Treng K.I.D.S. supports the Stung Treng Women’s Development Centre (SWDC) founded and run by an amazing man named Chan Dara Kim. For many years KIDS has provided funds for a preschool/kindergarten. Before Covid, many women came to the Centre to learn the art of weaving silk scarves and while working their children could attend the free early childhood daycare centre. Sadly, due to Covid, the Weaving Centre has closed down however KIDS continues to provide women and families, who are struggling, with free early childhood education for their children and a free computer program for youth.

It is always uplifting to visit these two programs. Every day 50 children come to the preschool/kindergarten Centre to learn, play and receive a hot nutritious meal. The teachers are incredibly dedicated and committed to improving the lives of these children. The mothers and parents are very grateful to have this happy, safe place for their children to go to as they try to eke out a living to support their families.

Seeing these children going from playing in the dirt and wandering around the village to playing with educational toys and learning to read, write and be creative is truly wonderful.

K.I.D.S. provides funds for all the learning materials, toys, playground equipment, salaries, and a hot meal each day. The difference this program makes for the children and the families is immeasurable!

Thank you for your kindness and support.
Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick

Basic Needs

 Dear Friends,

We are now back in Canada. As many of you know K.I.D.S. has been helping support families of the poorest children that are in our education programs during the COVID crisis. Many of the families were living on next to nothing due to the shut down of factories, shops, restaurants, sales of rice, and other means of employment. Each month we have been supporting about 700 people by buying them the basics…50 kilos of rice, cooking oil, fish sauce, soap, noodles, and fish and giving them a little cash to help with needed medicine.

We met with all the families and helped deliver food in different areas where we have K.I.D.S. education programs. In two of the areas, the families came to the schools on a Sunday to pick up their much-needed supplies and in another area, we went and delivered the supplies to their houses.

As we addressed all the families we told them that thanks to the kindness of others that support K.I.D.S. we have been able to assist them through these incredibly difficult times. Needless to say, the families expressed their sincere heartfelt appreciation for everyone’s support. It was both heartbreaking and heartwarming to meet the families and know how hard they have had to struggle and yet they were smiling and not complaining about their situations, making the best of what has happened to them as well as helping each other.

The good news is that the factories and other places of employment, as well as the sale of rice, fish and other agricultural products, are slowly coming back. KIDS is now reducing our support as these families get back on their feet. We cannot thank you enough for reaching across the globe to assist those in need.

Wishing you and yours all the very best,

Adrianne and Rick

Computers for Better Futures

 Hello Everyone,

We are going to the airport to fly home from Cambodia tonight. We have more stories and projects to write about during our 11 weeks here and will send more updates when we get home. Thank you friends and donors for all of your support that makes the work that K.I.D.S. does possible.

Below is our latest post!!
Rick and Adrianne

Dear Friends,

We hope this finds you well. Supporting education is a pivotal part of K.I.D.S. and having access to technology is pivotal to education in this day and age. IT skills play an essential role in teaching, researching and learning.

In the past five years, we have visited high schools with as many as five to six thousand students and no computers; even though they have teachers trained to teach computer skills, the schools cannot afford them. Each year, with the support of KIDS donors, we purchase computers for schools and training programs. Now computer classes run daily, allowing hundreds of students to learn these essential skills.

During this trip, we have been able to purchase more computers for students at schools as well as computers for teachers so they can use them to prepare courses, do research, and keep attendance and marks. The teachers share the computers for different subject areas.

We also provide computer labs for after school training in more isolated rural and poor city slum areas.

It has been great to visit the schools and see everyone learning, and we know that these skills will help change their futures and give them more opportunities in their lives.

As always, we thank you for bringing technology to young people.
Wishing you and yours all the very best,

Adrianne and Rick

Tuk Sa-at (Beautiful water)

Hello Everyone,

We hope you and yours are doing well and that life is getting back to a sense of normal. Here in Cambodia things are slowly opening up, which is very much needed. We had the great pleasure of spending a couple of days visiting a number of clean drinking water projects KIDS has built over the past couple of years, in rural communities. This past year, thanks to K.I.D.S. donors’ support, we were able to bring three schools and villages the gift of clean drinking water.

As many of you know clean drinking water is a huge issue in Cambodia. Even in our small apartment we have to buy our drinking water and cannot just drink it out of the tap. Although for us this is not expensive to buy, for those living in poverty it becomes a huge expense and many families end up drinking contaminated water from hand-dug wells or ponds. Children miss school from illness and are more lethargic due to ongoing diarrhoea.

Each year we bring clean drinking water to schools and communities, so children and teachers have free access to the water and the community members can also bring containers to take clean water home for drinking.

As we visited the schools we were met by the school principals, commune leaders, and students who expressed their gratitude for helping their school and community.

While meeting with the school administrators it was a pleasure to watch the students freely filling their water bottles. We also ensure that the filtration systems are kept up and that anything that is not working is replaced or upgraded.

Over the years we have brought clean drinking water to thousands of students and their families and improved their health, thanks to your support and thanks to our friend and logistician Kim Thol and a great team of water technicians and builders. Thank you for your continued support in bringing this life-saving resource to children and families.

We will close with a Slovakian Proverb, that is so true:

"Pure water is the world's first and foremost medicine."

All the very best to you and yours,
Until Next time,
Adrianne and Rick

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