Beach trip!

A group of volunteers from SIA's 5Cs volunteers organised and brought our Get Ready girls to the beach in Sihanoukville. We had staff accompanying, plus the usual checks, and the trip turned into a fantastic experience for the girls.

For many of them, this was their first trip out of Phnom Penh. The beach was a hit, and they came back talking a mile a minute about the trip, and most importantly, when would they be able to go back again?

The make-up workshop. (Dale Edmonds: We had a long discussion about whether to teach make-up skills.

We know make-up is going to be something the girls will fool around with as teenagers and young adults. Jobwise, basic pretty make-up is a plus for a young woman here. It makes you look polished and grown-up, and almost all our adult female staff wear some make-up.

But given that make-up can also be used as part of sex-work, we were worried we'd be encouraging them to value physical beauty over inner and that the community would see us as teaching adult sexualised behavior through make-up.

SIA staff have fantastic make-up, as anyone who's travelled Singapore Airlines knows, and I talked to the volunteers about our concerns. They decided to teach light professional make-up, treating it as a job skill and a way to make the most of your own natural beauty.

Talking to the staff afterwards, I was really happy to hear their positive feedback and enthusiasm for the way the workshop was held. Thanks, SIA!)

Dinner by the beach!

Yoga exercises to wake-up in the morning. That's how the cabin crew make it through long flights *g*

Thank you SIA!

Bright Girls at Steng Treng

On 7 March 2008, Riverkids participated in a Women's Day event organised by Oxfam Quebec. Sok Lee and a couple of the Bright Girls set up a booth at the exhibtion site at Steng Treng, selling products made by the girls and Riverkids parents. Here's more from Sok Lee:

The exhibition in Steng Treng was a good chance to show the activities from RKF to the public in Steang Streng. Riverkids Foundation brought our products and our photo activities for that event.

Two from the bright girl group, managed by Ms. Soklee made that exhibition very successful. The girls worked very hard to sell the products with the smile on their faces and they sold a lot of products and earned about 130000 riel in that event.

Many thanks to Oxfam Qubec that had set this program up.

Bright Girl's Rewards

The Bright Girls are a trio of graduated Get Ready! girls who are now practising to make little girl dresses and dolls. After graduation in mid-Nov, they've been busy practising their sewing skills and we, the Singapore Office on our part have been displaying the dresses for sale during fairs. Money raised from the sales goes back to them and the Microfinance Dept, hence creating a revolving loan where funds get replenished. And yes, the dresses will be put up on Shopify soonest! The Girls are also given a monthly salary from Riverkids Foundation til the time their kiddy clothing empire takes off.

Here's a little write up by Sok Lee on the day the girls first got their salaries from RKF. Very touching:

What an emotional day it was!

On the 25 of December, it was the first time in life that our get-ready graduates got their salary from doing the embroidery work. Everyone was excited and proud of themselves when they could earn money to support themselves as well as their family. They almost burst into tears with pride blowing in their mind and here their hard work so far has paid of.

However, what made us want to cry with high emotion was when we saw one of our graduates giving some of her little money she made to her father. Both the father and the daughter were emotionally excited.

“Never ever have I expected to see this thing happen. Thank you Riverkids that creates this wonderful day for my daughter and my whole family”, said her father with tears dropping over his cheeks. Two of them cried and hugged one another with hope in their future life. We, Riverkids staff, wholeheartedly shared this feeling with them too.

At the end of the day, our hard-work was paid which is a high motivation for us to keep working hard and contribute to community development as much as we can.