Round-up for the last two weeks

• In Singapore, we've been moving and changing things around and in Cambodia, it's been Khmer New Year when Phnom Penh empties as everybody goes to visit their families.
  
  
• Most of our staff took leave to extend KNY and we had staff on stand-by for the few kids who still needed boarding and help, but things were mostly peaceful and quiet for a change!
  
  
• Women On A Mission came up from Singapore to give the kindergarten children a day of fun and made a generous donation. We were able to get all the kids a new (well mostly - second-hand but clean and presentable!) clothes for Khmer New Year.
  
  
• Inflation has hit us hard with rising food costs. The hardest has been the burden on staff. Everyone in Phnom Penh is struggling on salaries that were decent last year and now barely make ends meet. In June, we're scheduled to do a cost-of-living increase and Riverkids' pay policy is to pay exactly in the middle of the range of NGO salaries. We make up for working in difficult and unpopular neighbourhoods with decent health insurance and a really supportive work environment, but keeping good staff is a huge challenge still. We've just lost two great staff to much better paying jobs, in part from the skills and experience they picked up with us.
  
  
• Thanks Elaine Meyers too! You've been a great supporter.
  
  
• We were wonderfully surprised with an unexpected gift of a hundred backpacks full of school materials and stationary. Thanks, Jane and friends - enough for all our grade schoolers at Alexandra and Blum! The next challenge is getting them up from Singapore to Phnom Penh. If you're travelling there, please let us know! We appreciate every spare kilo of luggage.
  
  
• We can't get registered with the Singapore government as a local charity because we would have to commit to spending at least 80% of our income, including international donations, in Singapore or to help Singaporeans. This has been a big blow as we lost as significant grant opportunity because we can't offer tax deductability locally (only in Cambodia! Cambodian corporations, call us!). We're now following up on registering with the EDB or as a society, but it's not at all straightforward. The only cheerful part was that the week of the meeting with NCSS, a local paper reported that one of the biggest local foundations, Temasak Foundation, has the same registration problem because they mainly work in the region too.