More school supplies deliveries

As mentioned in the last entry, the Riverkids staff is currently in the process of distributing school supplies to all the children in Riverkids programs who will start state school on October 1. Providing notebooks, pens and pencils to kids currently attending class at Riverkids is enough of a project, but Riverkids also delivers school supplies to children it supports who live too far away from the main site to be involved with Riverkids on a daily basis.

On Tuesday, I once again accompanied the social workers and the volunteer and marketing coordinator as they traveled around Phnom Penh to do home visits and deliver school supplies.

Our first visit was to a family of Cham Muslims. The family of five lives full time on a boat that’s about 8 meters long and a meter and half wide (in my imperfect estimation). The Cham people are an ethnic minority group concentrated largely in southern Vietnam and Cambodia. They are predominately Muslim and have their own language, although most also speak the dominant language in the region where they live. Like many of the ethnic minority groups in Southeast Asia, the Cham are often isolated from mainstream society and desperately poor as a result. This particular family contacted Riverkids looking for help, and Riverkids agreed to support the children’s education although the family lives too far away for the students to come study at Riverkids everyday.

Next we drove to other end of the city to visit two Vietnamese families who were affiliated with Riverkids when it was located at its original site. Both of the families had only one small room in which to live, cook, eat and sleep. Nonetheless they welcomed us into their homes by serving us coffee and saving us the most comfortable places to sit.

In the afternoon, I went to Blum House with staff members to distribute schools supplies to the students there. Because different grades require students to have different numbers of notebooks, the staff had to organize packets for each child individually. Once the kids got their supplies, they couldn’t wait to open the packets and look at their new notebooks and pens. All the students had big smiles on their faces as they examined their new things. Most young kids are excited to get their own notebooks and pens at the beginning of the school year, and I think that’s even more true for the kids here, who have so few possessions of their own. The students are now prepared to begin school next Wednesday, and even more importantly, they’re excited about it.