Sohing's Farm School

Hello Everyone,

In a rural area here in Cambodia there is a woman that we met a few years ago when she was working at a restaurant in the city. We found out that Sohing took part of her very limited salary each month to help educate children in her village by paying for school supplies and teaching them English. As well Sohing provided a healthy meal once a week to the kids, as many are undernourished. We went out to the school, which she ran under her families house and were very moved by her compassion and commitment to helping others.

Fast forward three years. K.I.D.S. continues to support this program by providing funds for: teachers, school supplies, uniforms, a hot meal program and other needs. Sohing has returned to her familly home to help with the school and care for her aging father, grandparents and help run their subsitence farm.

Visiting the school we are always so impressed with the kids and how happy and committed they are to learn. One boy Nara, who was orphaned and living on his own since he was twelve years old, has now succeeded in reaching grade twelve thanks to Sohing and K.I.D.S. Thanks to K.I.D.S. donors he will be able to move to the city next year to further his education. His dream is to teach English. This is just one story of how your support can change lives and futures.


Each year we take all the kids on an outing as they are unable to afford to see even a small part of their own country. This year we took them to a mountain area where we swam under a waterfall and visited a beautiful temple. I wish we could pass on the joy that these kids experienced.


As you know K.I.D.S. has large projects that supports thousands of kids and families such as clean water, as well we find incredible people who are changing children's lives selflessly and together we support them with their good work.
Thank you for supporting us to support them!

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

From ECE to IT

Hello Everyone,

We hope all is well with you and yours. We recently got back from the N.E of Cambodia where we visited programs that K.I.D.S. funds. K.I.D.S. has been supporting the Stung Treng Women's Development Centre for over 10 years. This outstanding program supports women, families, children and youth in a variety of ways; by teaching women weaving and selling beautiful silk scarves, providing a free health clinic, providing free early childhood education/kindergarten for 50 children as well as providing free English and computer classes. Stung Treng is one of the poorest and most isolated areas in the country and many people live in poverty. Thanks to K.I.D.S. donors we are able to offer a very progressive Early Childhood Education program (ECE). The ECE program offers kids a healthy, safe and happy place to learn and also provides children with a nutritious food program, access to hygiene as well as supporting women so they can work and have their children well cared for. It is a terrific environment, with excellent teachers to help children to learn and grow. Thanks to Kim Dara Chan, the director, for his vision and never-ending commitment to improving the lives of women, children and families in this area.


K.I.D.S. also supports a free computer program at SWDC, where children, youth and adults can come to learn computer skills. Even in the poorest areas computer skills are needed to asisit in getting jobs, furthering education and be connected to opportunities and learning online. The teachers are eager share their I.T. skills and the students are incredibly motivated to learn.

K.I.D.S. supports both rural and isolated areas as well as urban areas. In Siem Reap January 10th High School has 5400 students. A few years ago, thanks to our contact Kim Thol, we heard that the school did not have one computer, even for the teachers! We could not quite believe that this major high school was not able to provide computer skills, especially in a tourist city such as Siem Reap. We are pleased to say that over the past three years we have been able to install and provide 102 computers and there are now a thousand students a week being taught computer skills. This year thanks to a generous donation we were able to add another 25 computers and open another class, needless to say, the students and teachers are appreciative and wanted us to thank everyone for their support...it is most students favourite subject!

On behalf of K.I.D.S. thanks for bringing education, support, opportunity and healthy beginnings to these young people, families and communities. 

 Until next time,

Adrianne and Rick

School Update

Hello Everyone,

Hope all is well? Here in Cambodia, we spend a lot of time supporting children with their education by helping to shelter them, keep them healthy, supply them with school materials etc. and buy bikes so they can get to school. Unfortunately, some times, even if they are able to get to school, there is simply no school to go to.

This year we have pooled donations from K.I.D.S. donors, Healthy Role Models Nanaimo, Compassionate Eye Foundation Vancouver, Lush, The Ames family Foundation Vancouver and the Asker Norway Lions Club to build not one but two schools, with a solar-powered drinking water system on the floating school.

One school is in the brick factory area where K.I.D.S. sponsors many students. Wat Sela Primary School has 550 plus children attending daily and sadly there are hundreds more that cannot come because of a lack of classrooms to accommodate them. We started building Wat Sela in early December. The main structure of the school is built and the roof framing and roofing will soon be completed as well. Then it will be plastered, painted and finished around the end of February and be ready for students soon after.

The second is a floating middle school for the fishing village of Moat Klar on the Tonle Sap Lake. Due to the isolation and remoteness on the lake, there is simply no access to education for children once they finish grade 6. If their families have the resources to send their children away to study, which most families simply can't afford, their choices are few, go to work on the fishing grounds and or get married way too young.

There are thousands upon thousands of children on and around the lake in remote areas. The new floating middle school, grade 7 to 10, will be the first one on the lake and will allow the children from Moat Klar and nearby villages to have access to further education. We are also installing a clean drinking water project, on the school, to provide water to the students at the new school as well as the elementary school that K.I.D.S. built a few years ago.

Logistically both projects are challenging and thankfully we have the right contacts to make is all happen and skilled workers on both projects to complete them.

Building and launching the two steel scows for the floating school was one of the more challenging parts of both projects. They were welded and made entirely by hand with virtually no cranes or heavy equipment to help build or launch them. Have a look at the launch of one of the hulls at this link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqYIRjT4jJc&feature=em-share_video_user

Thank you to the many K.I.D.S. donors and foundations for providing the funding to build the space to allow a few hundred more children to attend school and improve health through access to clean drinking water.

Will keep you posted,
Until next time,
Rick and Adrianne

Bikes, Books and Bunches of Fun

Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. As you know KIDS focuses on education, clean drinking water, healthcare and generally improving the lives of children who face difficult situations. One simple and fairly cheap way of improving a child and a families life is by providing them with a basic bicycle. Throughout the year we give out hundreds of bicycles to those who need one.


Many of the parents come to the school for the bike distribution. It is a happy event. A bike does not only allow children to continue their education, as most rural schools are often such long distances from students homes, it is also used for transportation for the family to go to market etc.


KIDS also assists schools and students by providing, books/school supplies, backpacks, whiteboards and uniforms.


Teachers and families appreciate this support as it improves the level of education these children receive.


Although education is incredibly important KIDS also believes that giving children and youth the opportunity to let go, have fun and broaden their borders is also important. Each year we take kids from our sponsorship programs for outings. It is wonderful to see these young people, laugh, play and see new sights. Many have never been on a bus, seen a movie, swam in a lake, been in a city or rode an escalator. We think the photos say it all!!


Thanks as always for your support,
Until next time,
Adrianne and Rick

Floating Middle School

Dear Friends,
We hope all is well with you and yours. K.I.D.S. has quite a few projects on the go this year. One of these projects, that we are pleased to tell you about, is a floating middle school. Last year Lion's Club Norway contacted us and asked us to partner with them to build one of the few if any floating middle schools out on the Tonle Sap Lake.

As some of you may remember K.I.D.S. built a floating primary school on the lake 8 years ago, thanks to a very generous donation. Life on the lake is extremely difficult and it is hard for children to get an education.

When we visited a primary school on the lake many years ago we could not believe how the little, overcrowded school was literally sinking under our feet.


The villagers were happy to have a well built and safe primary school for their community. Since building the school more and more children have been able to get an education, however, after grade six, there is nowhere else that they can go to further their learning.

Lion's Club Norway generously offered to donate through K.I.D.S. to build a middle school and we are pleased to be able to manage the construction of the school. Thanks to our partner Compassionate Eye Foundation we will also be installing one of the lakes first clean drinking water systems at the school. Children and families on the lake have little to no access to clean drinking water and suffer from illnesses due to drinking polluted lake water.

We have started the project, the builders are now building the steel barges that will support the school, at the port near Siem Reap (where we live) and once the school is built we will have it towed to the village. Needless to say, the students, families and teachers are excited to have a higher level of education in their community.


The five teachers, who live in one room on the elementary school year-round, work very hard to educate the students.

They too live difficult lives and sacrifice comfort and privacy to better the future of the children in these villages. K.I.D.S. plans to improve their living conditions at the elementary school. We will keep you posted.

With gratitude and best wishes,
Adrianne and Rick

New Year, New Life, New Beginnings

Dear Friends,

We wish you all a happy, healthy and meaningful new year. The new year is both a time for new beginnings and a time for reflection. Here we are celebrating past achievements and supporting new opportunities for children, youth and families. We were pleased to have a celebratory dinner for some of the young people who recently graduated from their yearlong hospitality training program. They now all have good jobs and are heading into a new and exciting phase of their lives. It was wonderful to see how their situations have changed since joining K.I.D.S. Smart Kids program 7 years ago and as one young man put it "if it were not for you and K.I.D.S. we would not be us" there were tears of appreciation, happiness, and gratitude...which they asked us to pass on.

We are so grateful to Hak Sok, who manages the program and also takes kids to live with his family in the city so they can attend their training programs. We now have three more young people in training school and living with Hak and his wonderful family.

In the same week we spent time in the countryside meeting and interviewing new students and their families. As we went to visit each of their basic dwellings and chat we were filled with both sadness and hope. These families are extremely poor. Giving up the labour of one child, to further their education, is a noble sacrifice; as they could work in the brick factories and increase the family income, however their desire to better their children's lives outweighs their basic needs. Thanks to you we were able to add eleven more families to the program.

We know that through K.I.D.S. support this program we will be able to assist the families to make life easier by providing them with bathrooms, better living conditions, bikes and solar lighting systems over the next few years. We have witnessed the changes families go through when given support and it is truly uplifting.

The new classrooms are well underway and everyone is very excited to soon open more spaces for children to learn. The building team is so happy to have the work and this project contributes to the village economy.

For many children and families here, thanks to your support and generosity, there is much to be celebrated and look forward to.

One of the graduate students sent this song to thank everyone for their support. (here is the link)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDEmA2GizZA (Open in YouTube)

Until next time,
Adrianne and Rick

Full Circle

Dear Friends,

Hope all is well? Many of you may remember the story of Sopeak. We first met Sopeak in the countryside outside of Siem Reap 11 years ago. We were delivering food, household supplies and clothing to her village, where some of the families were so desperately poor many kids did not have clothes.

While in the village, from the edge of the circle which formed around us, a woman pushed her daughter forward and told her to speak to us in English. Sopeak was very small and shy but spoke to us in very clear and accent free English, which was quite astonishing as she lived so far out in the countryside. She had learned some English from an American teacher who had taught her while in her village.
The short version of the last 11 years is that K.I.D.S. sponsored Sopeak's education from that point on to complete elementary, high school, English classes and university. Sopeak rode many, many kilometers in her 12 hour days to and from school on her bicycle through the choking dust of the dry season and the muddy, rutted, water filled potholes of the rainy season. After high school K.I.D.S. sponsored Sopeak to live in the the city, in a rented room, and we provided a small living stipend for her while she attended university. Through elementary, high school as well as university Sopeak received top marks in all her classes; all the while struggling with a 50% hearing loss, due to infection that was left untreated, as the family could not afford medication.

Last year we attended Sopeak's wedding, she married a gem of a man, they love each other very much and they now have a beautiful and happy 4-month old boy.

When Sopeak was young, being the eldest child, she and her father would hunt frogs and fish to try to feed the rest of the family through very difficult times. We are so happy to see the outcome of Sopeak's dedication to education and fight to improve her lot in life. She and her husband have bought a small piece of land behind her parent's house and are working on a simple basic house and have planted fruit trees to establish a future home.
We recently went out to visit her family, the family has improved their lot in life by working together. Inspired by Sopeak, in her quest for education, her 4 younger sisters have learned or are in the process of learning English and the two older ones have good jobs as well.

But the best thing of all is that Sopeak is now a school teacher in the very same village school that she went to as a child. She has truly come full circle in her life and is now passing on both the goodwill that all of you have shared by supporting Sopeak and the knowledge that she has received through education to other children. As well Sopeak hopes to teach English to village children.

We hope that Sopeak's story will bring some joy to your hearts and a smile to your faces at this time of year.

From Sopeak and the many students and families, under your collective wings, and ourselves we thank you and wish you all the best this Holiday Season and may you be surrounded in a circle of love of friends and family.

Till Next Time
Rick and Adrianne