KIDS & Angkor Hospital for Children

Dear Friends,

We hope you are enjoying your summer. K.I.D.S. has assisted Angkor Hospital For Children (AHC) in many ways for over twenty years. When we first visited the hospital, they needed laundry sheds, so we offered to build the sheds over the outdoor clotheslines. In the early days, all the hospital's laundry was done by hand and hung out to dry.

In the rainy season, drying the bedding, scrubs, and other items was very challenging. The two sheds significantly improved the ability of the staff to keep up with the demands of the dirty laundry. Unlike hospitals in our world, families have to buy food and cook in the facilities provided at the hospital to feed their children while they stay at AHC. In addition to renovating the kitchen, we built a garden so the poorest families could harvest vegetables to feed their children. We have done many other projects there over the years, including renovating the microbiology lab so the hospital could identify many diseases onsite to shorten diagnosis to treatment time.

We recently received an email from Angkor Hospital For Children (AHC), which we have included below. We want to share it with all of you who have kindly helped so many children and families through K.I.D.S. throughout the years.

Dear Kids,

Hi! I'm Dr Neary, AHC's neonatologist. I care for newborn babies. We see miracles every day in our neonatal unit. Every day, the smallest babies are fighting to live. Even when all odds are against them. Today, I want to introduce Chan — one of these miracle babies.

Panha was only 7 months pregnant when she felt something wrong. But as a struggling single mother, she worried about the cost of treatment. Panha decided to travel to Siem Reap, where she knew she could find free care. But midway through her journey, Chan was born. Weighing just 1.6 kilograms, Chan was in critical condition.

The local clinic transferred them to AHC. We immediately placed Chan in an incubator and gave him a feeding tube. He was barely hanging on. While Chan fought to live, our medical social work team supported Panha with food and financial assistance. A month later, Chan had grown strong, stable and healthy. He could finally go home.

Miracles are made every day here at AHC. And we owe it all to supporters like you, KIDS, who never stop caring.

All the best,
Dr. Say Sopheakneary
AHC neonatologist

Thanks for making miracles come true.

Until next time,
Adrianne and Rick
Co-founders

Bikes for Better Futures

Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. Here in Canada it is summer time, which everyone looks forward to. In Cambodia it is the rainy season, which can be a challenging time for people there, especially when you live in the countryside, where most people live. The school year takes a break from mid-March to mid-May, so the students have to get to school during the rainy season, which can be difficult. As many students have to travel long distances to school, walking one to two hours, having a bicycle makes the world of difference.

One of K.I.D.S goals is to help young people get to school by purchasing as many bicycles as we can each year.

Where we live bikes are used mainly for pleasure and exercise; in Cambodia a bicycle can make the difference of getting an education or not. The families also need bicycles to help them get to the market to buy food or transport clean drinking water home. Needless to say the children and families are happy to get bicycles and often two children can ride on one bike to school. Providing bikes we all help break the poverty cycle by making it easier for students to get to school.

We work with one of our K.I.D.S. great managers to purchase and deliver the bikes, which are very simple bicycles but last a long time. Needless to say the children and families are happy to get them. A bike is only $60.00, so we have been able to provide hundreds of children with bikes.

Thank you for your support and for helping students continue their education and makin their lives so much easier

Until next time,
Adrianne and Rick
Co-founders

Off To An Early Start

Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. As you know K.I.D.S. supports education for children, youth and young adults. As we think of children and education we often forget about early childhood education (unless you have little ones). In our world, we are very lucky to have daycares and kindergartens where children can come together and play and learn and parents can do their work.

In rural Cambodia, there are very few, if any, daycares and early childhood education programs. Many years ago we got involved with a women’s silk weaving centre in northern Cambodia and we soon realized that the women had a very difficult time working due to a lack of daycare. So we decided to raise funds and start a centre for young children, where they could learn, have a good nutritious meal, shower, play and have fun. The women were very grateful. The centre started with a few kids and now we have 60 young ones that come daily.…even though, sadly, the weaving centre closed. The other onsite programs continue to support women, which KIDS also helps with, by providing a computer training program and English classes. The centre also provides a free health clinic and counseling for women who are struggling which is funded by Kindred Hearts, another Canadian NGO.

Thanks to our donors the daycare/kindergarten continues. The teachers and staff are passionate about their work and they can bring their young children there as well. We also built a small playground, which is loved by the kids. Visiting the school is heart-filling. When we would walk through the village we would see young children barefoot playing on the dirty, dusty roads, with no toys or games, no clean areas to play, now the kids sit in clean classrooms and learn to read and write, they play outside in the playground, they sing songs, have toys, books and receive healthy snacks and lunch daily. As well we have showers for their hygiene…it is truly a joy-filled place.

Thank you for giving these children a good start and bringing knowledge, good health, and happiness to their lives.

Until next time,
Adrianne and Rick

Housing and Hope

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, K.I.D.S. is committed to helping impoverished families have a safe and secure place to live. The living conditions in the remote villages of Cambodia can be very difficult. Each year, thanks to our great donors, K.I.D.S builds houses for the poorest families of children in our Smart Kids education program. Seeing how people must live can be heartbreaking and it is hard to imagine how they survive in the heat and the rainy season.

Some of the families live in terrible row housing in the brick factories where they work for slave labour wages. K.I.D.S also helps some of these families purchase a small piece of land which we can build a house on so they can live on their own.

These past few months, thanks to our great group of builders, We have been able to build four new houses for families. Even though these houses look small and simple compared to our standards, they are a dream come true to the families and make a huge difference to their health, comfort, security and their day to day living.

We would like to Thank You All Very Much for your support with improving so many lives.
We wish you and yours all the very best.
Until Next Time.
Adrianne and Rick

Reaksmey's Dream Fulfilled

Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. We wanted to send along a quick update on Reaksmey's Dream the post we sent along on International Women's Day in March.

On March 29th, Reaksmey boarded her first ever flight and made her way to Paris. After some sightseeing in Paris she went on to her internship at La Chartreuse Du Bignac south west of Paris.

Here are a few photos she forwarded to us.

Thank you everyone, for helping and supporting Reaksmey through K.I.D.S. all these years to help fulfill her dream of education and studying and working abroad.

Till Next Time,
Rick and Adrianne

Thank You Everyone

 

Dear Friends,
Two weeks ago we travelled to Ottawa, and on March 21st, at Rideau Hall, we were awarded the Governor General's Meritorious Service Metal by the Canadian Governor General, Mary Simon, for founding and running Kids International Development Society.

We feel, without question, that we would like to share this award and this honour with many people, all of K.I.D.S. private donors, foundations, businesses, individual kids and classrooms full of school children raising money, the many volunteers who have assisted us at our annual fundraisers and the anonymous person who nominated us, and K.I.D.S. board of directors.

We also would like to share it with the many thousands of impoverished children, families, and individuals who K.I.D.S. has served over the years, get up every day to face the horrendous odds stacked against them with ironclad determination, grace, and humility, from who we have learned many life lessons. As well as our international program managers, builders, friends, and drivers who have supported our work overseas in several countries all these years.

And of course, we share it with our daughter Danielle, who loved children and was on her way to becoming a teacher, who’s passing on the 26th of March 2000 ripped our life apart and left a huge hole in our hearts that sent us on a quest in search of answers, meaning, hope and acceptance that led us to receive this award.

We are incredibly humbled and hugely honored to receive this recognition from the Canadian Government. The Meritorious Service Medal is awarded to Canadians who bring great honor to Canada.

Believe us when we say we could never have come close to this award without all your love and support, behind, beside, and around us.

We truly hope you all feel you are a part of this honour too.

Till Next Time,
Rick and Adrianne

Reaksmey's Dream

 Dear Friends,

We hope all is well with you and yours. Today is International Women’s Day. A day when we celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women around the world.

Many years ago Rick and I volunteered at a street children’s shelter in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The shelter helped orphaned, abandoned, very poor, and abused children. Each year we volunteered and worked there helping to paint, fix things, buy clothes, and through K.I.D.S. fund their education and cultural dance programs, etc.

After a few years, the shelter was going to be closed and You Vath (the house mother) decided that she wanted to take in the girls. So we went to her house, and thanks to K.I.D.S., we were able to do a renovation to make it bigger and started K.I.D.S. Girls Home. We had up to 23 girls at times of all ages who lived and grew up there.

Fast forward to today! We recently heard from Reaksmey, one of the girls who lived at the girls' home since she was a young child. Reaksmey is now 21 years old.

K.I.D.S. funded Reaksmey through school and when she graduated high school we enrolled her in a great hospitality training program. Reaksmey’s dream, from a teenager, was to one day travel and work in another country, she especially wanted to go to France. Along the way, with K.I.D.S. support she became fluent in English and French.

Reaksmey recently phoned us to tell us that she had received a scholarship to go to France for her final year of training. Needless to say, she was beside herself with joy and so were we. Recently the French ambassador came and met the graduates who were chosen for this wonderful opportunity.

This month Reaksmey will travel with some other students to work in France at a beautiful resort.

K.I.D.S. helped her to buy a piece of luggage, as she had never had one, and we also bought her a laptop for her work and continuing studies. She leaves Cambodia on the 27th of this month. 

This is just one story of many stories that we have witnessed over the years. Thanks to K.I.D.S. donors, we have helped many girls to get an education and find decent-paying work as teachers, accountants, electrical engineers, hotel and restaurant managers. Where many of these young women would have started having children at young ages and lived a life of poverty, they are now focused on their self-esteem, education, careers, and changing not only their futures, but the futures of the next generation of girls and women. So today, please join us in celebrating all these amazing young women who have worked so hard and for being a part of changing their futures for the better. Reaksmey promised us she would send us a picture of herself in front of the Eiffel Tower and when we receive it we will send it along.

Reaksmey's dream will soon come true.... Thanks To You!!

Until Next Time,
Adrianne and Rick