Mud Glorious Mud!

How much effort would your children make to get to school in the morning?  They might be prepared to brave a little snow for a couple of days, but the photos in this post show the efforts which our children at CCC school have to go to for days and weeks on end, during the rainy season.  

Many of them travel miles to get to school every day, but still turn up eager to learn after an arduous journey.

The new school year has started and CamKids is proud to announce that nearly all our CCC students passed their final exams of 2015-16 and therefore moved up to the next grade.

The new academic year of 2016-17 started in November and prior to this we were very busy getting all the supplies ready to distribute to the students. This involved measuring all the children’s feet and collecting data for their uniform sizes. Our supplies cannot be bought locally so everything is sourced from Phnom Penh – quite a task!

This year, CamKids provided 52 bicycles to our graduate students who were moving on to study at the local secondary school located 30 minutes away from CCC school. In addition, all our graduate students were supplied with uniforms, shoes, school bags and study materials. We wish them all well in this next step.

We also completed stocking CCC school with new books, pencils, art supplies etc. in readiness for the new school year and our enthusiastic students.

This year we have just about managed to squeeze our students into the existing classrooms but by next year we must add at least 2 more classrooms to accommodate our growing number of pupils and we would also dearly love to add a separate library for students and the villagers to spend some leisure time and improve their literacy skills.

It costs only a few pounds per week to sponsor a child at the school.  If you are interested in sponsoring a school child or donating towards this fantastic project, please contact us.

If you live in the UK, you can text CAMK13 £10 to 70070 to

make a £10 donation (or change to £5, £3 etc). 

Even a small donation of a few pounds from all of our 

supporters will make a huge difference.

Remember, we do not have any overheads, so 100% of

your donation goes to helping the children. 

Alternatively, go to www.bit.ly/singdonate or www.bit.ly/regdonate to make a single or regular credit or debit card donation in £, $ and A$ or www.bit.ly/cccpaypal to pay in any currency through PayPal (all cards accepted). 

Thank you 

The CamKids Trustees

Agriculture at Chbar Chros School

Our Chbar Chros Community (CCC) School Program Manager, Sophak, continues to put his skills he learned from studying at the Agricultural University in Phnom Penh to develop the garden at the CCC School. He designed and built a large vegetable garden on the school’s land in order to pass on his knowledge, by teaching the students useful life skills and the importance of crop diversity. 

The children then pass on these skills to their own families who are simple rice farmers and have had little or no access to education. By learning about different crops, the families improve their diet and have the potential to earn additional income. 

The garden continues to flourish throughout the year and different kinds of vegetables have been growing in the garden, such as morning glory, kale, carrots, cabbages, pumpkins, gourds, radishes, cucumbers, garlic, lemon grass, lettuce, mint, beans, zucchini and some European vegetables.

All the vegetables are cooked for the kids at CCC and given to the kids in working in the garden to cook at home. We sell the rest of the vegetables to the villagers at a good price and have invested in three plastic fish ponds and vegetable seeds. 

The idea of the ponds is to get water for the vegetables and to raise fish for staffs’ consumption, selling some to the villagers. Recently CamKids has managed to purchase some additional land, adjacent to the school and plans to expand the ponds and garden, when funds allow.

If you live in the UK, you can text CAMK13 £10 to 70070 to
make a £10 donation (or change to £5, £3 etc). 
Even a small donation of a few pounds from all of our 
supporters will make a huge difference.
Remember, we do not have any overheads, so 100% of
your donation goes to helping the children. 

Alternatively, go to www.bit.ly/singdonate or www.bit.ly/regdonate to make a single or regular credit or debit card donation in £, $ and A$ or www.bit.ly/cccpaypal to pay in any currency through PayPal (all cards accepted). 

Thank you 

The CamKids Trustees

Chbar Chros Community School Visiting Dentist

Earlier this year, CamKids hosted a group of four Australian dentists and 10 Cambodian dental nurses and assistants to work at CamKids’ Chbar Chros Community (CCC) School clinic and Krang Tatann village in Kampong Speu province for two weeks. The dental team also continued on to provide treatment in Takeo province.  

This is an annual dental health trip led by Dr. Hugh Sharpe which supplements the regular visits by CamKids' dental team and provides treatment for more complex dental problems than can be dealt with at our regular visits. In the two Kampong Speu province locations, a total of 570 patients were treated – mostly from areas where people could not afford to pay for dental care at private clinics. In Takeo province, 500 people were treated and most patients received three or four different treatments (fillings, extractions etc).

This work by Dr. Hugh and the team, was hugely appreciated by the communities and these annual visits will greatly improve their dental health. Dr. Hugh also delivered donations to villagers such as cooking oil, clothes, toys, toothpaste and toothbrushes to everyone who received the treatment.

Dr. Hugh said “after my experience last year with children and villagers in the rural community in Cambodia, I wanted to ensure that we also worked on problems rather than treatment which is why I brought quality products from the UK and the USA.” He also hopes that next year the dental trip will be able to visit other communities in different provinces in Cambodia. Dr. Hugh has already imported various items of dental equipment, included a generator which can work with mobile dental units.

CamKids, on behalf of the children who received treatment from the dental team, would like to give a huge thanks to Dr. Hugh, the team and everyone involved in this project.

Volunteering for CamKids

We have just received this short report from Ali Miller, a volunteer at our school in Kampong Speu. 

I have recently returned from volunteering at CamKids. I am studying nursing at university and I had wanted to volunteer for a while but never knew where I wanted to go. 

I heard about CamKids in Cambodia and immediately decided it looked perfect. I had never been to Cambodia before and knew it was a country where volunteering work would be put to good use. I volunteered at the school in Kampong Speu for a month and it was one of the best experiences of my life. 

The school was fun and the kids were definitely my highlight. They were great fun and always eager to learn. It also was also great to experience living with Cambodians and learning their culture. I was able to use my nursing skills when the medical team came to visit, which has really boosted my confidence in caring. 

Although I had a background in nursing before I came, CamKids offered a lot more than just medical experience, including teaching and experiencing new culture and meeting new people. I would definitely recommend volunteering at CamKids to anyone! Ali Miller 

If you have nursing, dental, teaching or similar skills and would like to volunteer for CamKids, please email contact@camkids.org.

Ben Nevis Challenge

We have just received the following report, from Holly Mackenzie, who has raised an incredible amount for CamKids, in memory of her Father, Ian: 

On March 30, 2015 our father, Ian Mackenzie (Mac to his friends) passed away suddenly. As anyone that has lost a parent will know, tough days followed. 

He had always been an active man, since being in the Royal Marines as a Mountain Instructor the outdoors was an essential part of his life. Spending time walking the mountain ranges was his idea of sheer perfection, it fed his soul. So it was no great surprise that his will stated his ashes were to be scattered at the summit of Ben Nevis. In fact the wording read ‘I will climb Ben Nevis if it’s the last thing I do’. Did I mention he had a wicked sense of humour? 

There followed some considerable planning as my brother lives in Dubai. Our friend Vicky announced she would like to join us too so everyone was working towards the trek that was to take place on the 31st May 2016. Training was made more difficult in that both Vicky and I live in Norfolk, one of the UK’s flattest counties! 

So to provide some additional motivation, we thought it would be a nice gesture to raise some money for charity in memory of Dad. He would have been tickled pink at the thought of people giving to a great cause in his name. So why CamKids? Well, our Dad was a great traveller and having done the family thing he spent the last years of his life living in Cambodia during the Summer and Norway in the winter. He lived frugally but was a known character in the places he resided, a real people person you might say. He would play street games with the children and they would follow him knowing that his pockets held sweets and he always had time for a chat and a laugh. CamKids felt like a good fit as soon as I read about the projects they’re involved with and so we set up a Just Giving page. We set our target at £500 which we thought was optimistic but we wanted something to strive for. Having now completed our ‘trek’ and at the time of writing our total stands at £1,080.95! We have had some amazing support and I count the experience as one I’m truly proud of.

That said, I have announced my retirement from mountain climbing following a 100% success rate. It is time to hand that baton to my children. 

Everyone at CamKids would like to say a huge THANKYOU to Holly and the team. If you would like to add to Holly’s total, you can do so at: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/TrekforMac.