Quick Singapore update!

Holly screend last night as part of a local film festival, and I took part in a discussion afterwards for Riverkids with Sallie, a Singapore-based academic, and Katrina, a UNIFEM volunteer.

I couldn't watch the film as a movie, because I was too fascinated by their accuracy. There are some quibbles - a line about adoptions as a cover for human trafficking, when it was baby buying and laundering, Holly's lack of basic Khmer - but they did a lot of background research and it shows.

Thuy Nguyen who plays Holly is wonderful to watch, because she reminds me of some of my favourite kids in the Riverkids program (I know, we're not supposed to have favourites, but there are some kids who just stand out in memory!), the street-smart and defiant ones. They're hard to reach, but once you get through to them, they'll do more than survive, they'll flourish.

Well worth buying the DVD (Amazon). It was rated M18 here in Singapore, but I'd be comfortable with a smart teenager watching as there's no on-screen sex, only implications.

We're super busy getting new shop items tagged, photographed and added to the shop, and updating the website, plus a long to-do list from the Cambodia team, but the great news is that Riverkids has received some excellent applications for the Project Manager post.

Fingers crossed, we'll have a post this October welcoming the new member of our team.

Thanks to Felix Hug and Julius Baer

Julius Baer is a Swiss bank, not a person although the people we did meet at the photography exhibition were all lovely.

Felix Hug is an award-winning Swiss photographer now based in Asia. His passion is travel photography, and he knows Cambodia well from photoshoots there, including some stunning images of Cambodian dancers.

Last Friday, Julius Baer sponsored an intimate photography exhibition at the National Museum in Singapore of Felix's work. His photographs are beautiful but here they had been printed on enormous canvases and placed on easels and the whole effect was intensely detailed vivid paintings.

Felix very generously gave one of his prints for a silent auction with the funds to Riverkids Project. Julius Baer matched the amount raised, and Riverkids received S$6,000.

The print is Monk meditating at Golden Rock.

Thank you so much!

The Riverkids logo.

Introducing the Riverkids logo...


The bright cheery yellow flower has transformed into a joyful little Flower!

We'll be getting a rubber stamp for it and this will be used in the shop tags, thank you envelopes, official documents and everywhere else we fancy!

Quick list update!

• We are gearing up for the first graduation of our Get Ready girls on 15 November. Parents are invited, certificates printed and best of all, we have already found a job for one girl, a business plan for three more, two back at high school and the rest being sorted out!
  
  
• The Hosea consultation has been gruelling and eye-opening. We are doing great operationally, but because we've grown so fast and organically, we don't have systematic structures for decision making and planning. Basically, we need to record down what we're doing so someone else can step in and takeover if needed, and we need to clearly link projects back to child trafficking and put in more monitoring/status reports. Doing it now will save us a lot of time later, and it is pretty simple. I have learnt what a logframe is!
  
  
• All our finances are now going to an external accountant, and we will get January-September's records first, then quarterly detailed statements. Huge relief as it was the most painful part to do because I had to triple-check everything. Now I can concentrate on checking Cambodia accounts to reality and have all the spreadsheety parts done much faster.
  
  
• I am really happy with our spending in Cambodia so far. We need to bite the bullet and hire more social workers, someone to do paperwork only, but all our new expenses - like the weekly boarding house - have been covered by specific donations. We're keeping at our costs.
  
  
• We were very lucky to negotiate rent with the landlord of our current Family House for the house adjoining that they also owned. This is going to be where the weekly boarding and Get Ready classes take place because there's way more room and privacy. The teenage girls boarding will have their own room to share! Also it's got a really nice big kitchen for us to prepare meals and add cooking lessons on. The RJC students going up are going to do up the boarding rooms so the kids feel comfortable and welcome, and help us add boards and posters for visitors to explain what's happening.
  
  
• We have met with several different NGO groups over the past two months, and in every case, people have been WONDERFUL. There are 'turf' problems when your work overlaps or you disagree on methods, but overall, in the past seven years in Cambodia, I've found the vast majority of people working in aid to be open about sharing ideas, resources and advice. We could not have gone this far without so much help. I hope we can be as helpful for other groups. Part of this might be that we usually work only with ground-level staff and small groups *g* like us!
  
  
• The two most likely new sites have been identified and this trip, we'll be firming up plans and a timetable for opening.
  
  
• Volunteers! Karen's interviews will form the basis of our microfinance, starting with three girls and about four adults. Then we have a sewing workshop group in December, more tentatively planned after, football and field trips, volunteers locally for the Riverkids shop and more. A Swedish lawyer is coming for three months to help train and put in a better child and family case management system. I met with a couple who volunteered recently and the best part was hearing their ideas for further work and suggestions.
  
  
• In Singapore, we've been selling Riverkids Shop at local fairs with a good response. We've sold close to US$5000 at them, and we're looking forward to a busy holiday season. DHL have given us great rates for express shipping, so this year, please shop with us!
  
  
• That's all I can remember right now. I leave on Wednesday for the graduation and some big meetings, and maybe this time I'll be awake enough at the end of the day to post!
  

RJC Open House!

Raffles Junior College (RJC) held her annual Open House last Fri where members of the public and of course future Rafflesians can visit and explore the premises. Students volunteers from RJC who have been helping Riverkids for the past few months also created a fabulous booth (Look below! Look below!).

I've got one of the volunteers, Sherie Tan, to do a little write up on the day itself:

Hello!

We are a group of year 1 students from Raffles Junior College embarking on an end-of-year international service learning project with RiverKids! As part of our fundraising efforts, we set up a booth during our school’s open house last Friday (5th October) selling bags, paper flowers and small ornaments made by the women from Bloom, and also notebooks personally designed by one of our team members!

We decided to be creative and came up with a “slum” theme for our fundraising activities for the day! Our booth was designed to look like a mini-slum house, with a structure made out of poles built by the boys of our team, covered with a blue tarp. We also got team members to dress up like children collecting “aik-chai”, wearing torn t-shirts and carrying gunny sacks, going around collecting donations. The team did not want our fundraising efforts to be merely just about asking the public and our schoolmates for money, but we wanted them to know the cause that we are fighting for- that is to aid RiverKids in its effort to stop child trafficking in Cambodia. Our structure around our booth was definitely eye-catching and attention seeking and many came by to see what our booth was about!

In addition, we have put up several posters around school to publicise about our project cause and fundraising efforts! Posters include those on toilet doors with the words “don’t push me away” and on lift doors with the words “don’t tear me apart”. We will be organizing fundraising activities for the next two weeks in our school, with an improved business plan after our first fundraising experience during open house!

(: Wish us luck!

Our Booth!

Pretty handmade flowers! Many of our friends were really impressed when we told them they were hand made by the Cambodian women.

Our Notebooks!

One of our posters placed around school

Photos coming!

Several happy bits of news! We held a workshop for interested parents of Riverkids children to teach them how to fold roses and other flowers using locally available papers. The most beautiful were with this heavy soft mulberry-like paper, shown above. We've worked out several low-skill time-intensive handcrafts that will produce gorgeous Christmas things. Well, roses aren't very Christmassy, but they are lovely and light, so easy to post! and always good as a gift - ooh, I could offer them as add-ons to the silk scarves, so you send someone a scarf with three roses tucked inside.

Someone anonymously donated seven digital cameras to us! We've got one in Cambodia being shared by the staff, and now we have a net connection at the office, you can expect lots more photos. We're hoping to get the kids and teenagers taking photographs themselves and to start documenting their lives themselves.

And if you're in Singapore, swing by SMU near the Mt Faber Tunnel and see Riverkids at the Substation Tunnel Party! It's part of the SeptFest and we will be hanging out with punk music, arts and social causes and a lot of people! There will be evening yoga and short films and lots of high-falutin' art things! A group of RJC volunteers will be pitching in, so come by from 4pm to 11pm!