Thank you for supporting Baby Bellies

The Baby Bellies Programme is by far one of the most easily positive programmes at Riverkids. We see malnourished babies in the slum, get sponsors, raise funds, get the parents to agree to put their babies in our programme, start feeding the baby and then we see the tremendous progress the babies and toddlers make as they blossom into chubby healthy babies.

Earlier this year, we worked out how many babies would need our help in 2010, and realised we hadn't budgeted enough for the Baby Bellies programme. Nutrition for a malnourished baby or toddler is about $0.50-$1 a day, depending on their age and health.

We asked people to help us expand to covering 12 babies, and we are delighted to say that a donation this week's donation has brought us to 11 babies!

Without the support of generous donors, this would not have been possible. We want to thank Ruth, Molly Jester from Stop Exploitation Now, Colin, Angie, Christine, Toh Chung, Seng Hon, Xiao Xiang, Katherine, Hanim and Nanci.

Thank you so much for your support and for sharing about us with your friends!

Cookies in Cambodia!

Thank you so much to the kind people at Camory Cookies! They gave us boxes of their delicious cookies as a special treat for our kids. The kids were very well behaved although we had a lot of laughing and playing in the queue and quick nibbles.

Camory is a Singapore-Cambodian business with a strong social sense. They're offered us help with employment, but we were unable at that time to find adult clients who wanted to work. The downside of working with dysfunctional families is that while the kids improve quickly, the parents take a long time to change, and sometimes sadly don't.

So if you're strolling along the riverside, do stop by House No. 167 for a bag of yummy cookies from Camory!

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.

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!

USAID furniture donation

Mr Sophon wrote to several agencies and embassies in Phnom Penh earlier this year to introduce Riverkids. We started out so tiny and basic that we've just come to what most NGOs start with, grant applications.

Two people from USAID came by and visited Riverkids Alexandra. Mr Sophon and I showed them around and they asked quite a few questions then said they'd let us know.

We were delighted when a few weeks later they donated a collection of second-hand furniture. Staff were sharing office chairs and working on the tiny coffeetable with files stacked up on a bookcase, and the five office chairs, a desk, two big filing cabinets and best of all - a second computer!

Thanks USAID!