October 2009 Report

Riverkids monthly report: Oct 2009

An ongoing goal of Riverkids is to integrate all of its children of school-going age into Cambodian state school. We are proud to report that by Oct 2009, 95 percent of our children were registered for state school, with our education department working to enroll the remaining 5 percent.
Keeping vulnerable children in school is not without its challenges. Dropping out is common and one issue this month was school authorities insisting that children who had dropped out and wanted to reenroll pay the full registration fee again—something our education officers had to contend with.
Another issue is parents removing their children from school because they want to put their kids to work. To encourage parents to keep their children in school, Riverkids organized a workshop to help parents understand how education can give a child a better future, more stability, better health, higher income and so on, in the long term. About 40 families participated and we hope this will result in more children staying in school consistently.
Beyond academic education, Riverkids’ hip hop dance programme continues to be hugely popular. Hip hop gives the kids a tremendous sense of accomplishment and of being “modern”, which boosts their self-confidence. During the October rains the classes became oversubscribed as the children looked for something fun to do indoors, but the show went on nevertheless. In fact, on 18 October, 10 Riverkids children took part in a hip hop competition held in Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s garden! Football too is all the rage, with 47 children in our programme with a Cambodian-Australian football organization that conducts training every Saturday morning.
Our social workers kept in touch with the families under their care in the Psa Touch, Doeunkvet and Railway Road slums, dealing with lack of employment, money, medicine and food but a lot of violence, HIV, sex work and other such problems that are unfortunately typical of these communities. In our Railway Road slum, we started a new project to support 27 more families there with the aim of getting their children into a local primary, and have hired a house mother from this community to give support to these kids.
October also saw two advocacy trips from Singapore. From 20-23 October, three filmmakers from Singapore toured the Alexandra community to see Riverkids in action, met with NGOs World Hope and Chap Dai to learn how Riverkids works with partner organizations and walked the slums with the street children to experience some of their life. It is hoped that as these filmmakers gathered their material they also took away with them a better understanding of the lives of vulnerable children in Cambodia and the work of Riverkids. The other advocacy trip comprised a group of two observers who came to learn more about Riverkids and our work.
The micro business programme, which now has 13 girls working on embroidery, 30 women making necklaces, 6 girls sewing uniforms and another 13 girls sewing general items, received an order from Canada worth about US$750 for 1,800 necklaces, earrings and bracelets—marking the success of the programme. In spite of the limitations of the girls and women, they are delivering on this order and training hard to improve on their skills and creativity.
As part of our health education effort, Riverkids ran a programme to educate expectant mothers on the importance of pre-natal and infant health. These women were taught basic hygiene, diet and nutrition, infant care and encouraged to visit their doctors regularly to make sure they were generally well and to check for HIV. For premature babies of high-risk parents, Riverkids runs a Baby Bali programme that provides milk, health care and support. In October, however, 5 out of 6 families enrolled in this programme did not show up for their appointments, mainly because their survival hangs so much by a thread that even the few cents they possibly don’t earn by taking the time to get help is something they can’t afford to lose, but also because the Baby Bali centre is far from Riverkids and costs too much to get to. And, it has been difficult to get these families to practice what our nurses teach them, with many parents simply falling back into old, bad habits.
On top of this were the usual array of administrative and operational duties that had to be dealt with to keep Riverkids running smoothly, and planning for the coming months. All in all a successful October and we are now gearing up for the year end. Thank you everyone!

October 2009 Report

Quick update from Cambodia and Singapore

Blum children singing

 
With the Get Ready for Boys' pilot (funded by CLSA, thank you!) starting in November, and a big reshuffle of rooms as we moved admin and our Bright Girls' co-op to another space, freeing up rooms for more classrooms - well. November has started with a bang!

Thanks to Kaity Wilson and her friends and family, we were able to donate a photocopier to a local primary school that has been amazing for our students and many other poor kids. This means free attendance and better teaching for more than just Riverkids children.

Over in Singapore, Elaine has been wrapped up in grants and campaigns, and I've been catching up on months of backlog. The kindness and generosity of our donors has been amazing, and we hope to bring you more news more often *g*

Our Get Ready for Boys students

My honour to join Riverkids to do Projects & Communications

It’s now my third week with Riverkids and there is so much I have been exposed to regarding information on child trafficking and the general situation in Cambodia. I come to know of a real-life account on how a young girl from Riverkids escaped from a foreign pedophile and eventually brought him to court.

On one hand, it saddens me to hear such a heart-breaking story of a girl raped on multiple occasions (this is the harsh reality, I told myself). On the other hand, I am relief to learn that a child’s bravery supersedes fear in this case and that saved her life.

Many children in the Cambodian communities we are working with are benefiting from our programmes. I love, in particular, the Get Ready Programmes. It is such a wonderful model that we are implementing in other nearby slums to eventually eliminate child trafficking.

Besides loading myself with a deluge of information, I am planning for a few major campaigns, putting together grants for Riverkids and corresponding with our donors. It allows me to leverage on my past work experience in business development, marketing communications and of course, my love for kids!

Next month will be another exciting month, I will come face to face with the people we are serving in the slums. Besides interacting with them, I shall be capturing many precious moments on my digital camera.

I will get to meet our colleagues there and I think the first thing I want to do when I meet them is to commend them for the relentless and conscientious effort that they have been putting in to give their very best to the people in need.

I will also get to meet other NGOs and am looking forward to learn as much as I can from them. I shall return to the blog to provide more exciting news!