By Jess Robinson | Community Programme Manager
Dear Helping Hands Supporter ,
What a busy and exciting few months we've had at Helping Hands! From the completion of our clean water and electricity projects, to graduation and a dental programme! There's lots of news to fill you in on. Read on for all the details!
We have Running Water and Electricity!
We couldn't be more excited to announce that we now have electricity and running water at Helping Hands! A huge, huge thank you to volunteer Tom for helping us get this project started back in June, and to all of our generous donors who've supported us in completing the project.
Having running water has not only made health and hygiene standards much easier to control, it's also had a huge impact on the workload and working day of our gardeners Rhi and Hann, With a tap located in our garden and a hose pipe attached, watering the land now takes just a fraction of the time it used to, giving them more time to focus on planting and harvesting (and saving their backs!!).
The addition of electricity on-site has also been very exciting for our students and staff. We have electrical sockets in each classroom enabling our teachers to use more resources from their laptops in lessons. A wider variety of teaching methods makes for more engaged students! We even have some fans in our classrooms now, which are a very welcome relief from the hot sun and make it much easier for our students to concentrate in lessons.
A huge, huge thank you again, to everyone who supported us with getting our electricity and water up and running. It has made such a difference to our school, thank you!
Congratulations and Farewell to our Graduating Students
This month we said farewell to our students who have successfully completed our English Language Programme and are graduating from Helping Hands. Their hard work and commitment has really paid off, and we're very proud of what they have achieved.
The village chief and our students parents came to school to help us celebrate their success, and see their certificates being awarded. It was a great day full of smiles and celebrations!
Programme Developments
We're continually looking for ways to improve and expand Helping Hands, and the education and facilities that we can offer to our students and the wider community. Read on to see some of the positive changes we've been making.
Developing our Healthy Kids Programme
This last month has seen us focussing on our students dental health. We've made a couple of visits to the dentist at Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, with students who were experiencing pain or who we felt needed some treatment.
All the students received a thorough clean, and a few required further treatment and made a second trip to complete it. They all have lovely healthy teeth now!
This is a part of the programme that we hope to continue developing. We're aiming for all our students to be seen for a check-up at least once a year.
Community Work
Helping Hands is not just a school. We're not just here to support our students, we also want to support the community as a whole. We work with the village chief, the local government school and parents to support them in developing the whole village and community.
Project Coordinator Sopheap has been working closely with former student and University Scholarship recipient Lap to set up some road safety discussions with children and parents in the village, and they have also positioned signage and speed bumps are the village to warn drivers to slow down and drive carefully.
New Year, New Timetable, New Curriculum
We want to give our students the best possible education that we can, and have been looking at ways in which we could increase teaching hours and improve our curriculum.
After a lot of hard work from Sopheap, we have a new timetable which will be in place for the start of our new school year on 3rd December. By putting a couple of our smaller classes together we have freed up some teacher time for extra lessons, and we have also offered part-time teacher Yoeuy a full-time position to increase teaching hours further. This additional time allows us to provide regular sports lessons, more maths, arts and crafts and reading classes.
Congratulations to Yoeuy for proving himself to be such a valuable member of the team, we are all looking forward to having him at the school full-time. We're also very excited to see the improvements our students will make with some extra lesson time!
Brand New Website
We're excited to tell you our brand new website is up and running!
Do you want to know more about how Helping Hands started? or more about our staff members? This is the place to do it!
www.globalteer.org/helpinghands
Please share our website with friends, family and colleagues who may be interested in what we're doing!
The Season of Giving is on its Way...
#GivingTuesday - 27th November
Could you empower a student by giving them the tools they need to grow, shine, and ultimately break out of a life of poverty?
$12.50 a month will pay for a child to have this opportunity, to receive education, nutritious breakfasts and health and social care. Can you support one child? Or two? Or maybe even more? Whatever your contribution, we are incredibly grateful, and by committing to a recurring donation on November 27th your gift will stretch even further as GlobalGiving are matching new recurring donations by a HUGE 100%!
In addition to the match on recurring donations, there is also $150,000 of bonus money available, which will be distributed proportionally based on total funds raised during the day. You may not be able to commit to a recurring donation but you can still make a big impact with a one-off donation and help us to receive as big a share of the bonus money as possible!
There really has never been a better time to donate! Click the link below to take full advantage of GlobalGiving's match campaign.
https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/free-education-for-300-children-in-cambodia
#GivingTuesday starts 27th November at 0:00 (midnight) ET, which is 5am in London, mid-day in Cambodia and 4pm in Sydney. You can check the start time for your own time zone here.
Thank you!
Thank you to our wonderful volunteers from the past couple of months; John, Sally, Helena, Louise, Amisha, John and Natasha, you have all been incredible! Are you interested in volunteering with us or are you a past volunteer who wants to share their story or experience? Contact us at helping.hands@globalteer.org !
As always, thank you so much for continuing to support us! Please continue to give us a 'helping hand' and spread the word to your family and friends.
From all the Students, Teachers and Staff orkun chran!!
Links:
By Jess Robinson | Community Programme Manager
By Jess Robinson | Community Programme Manager
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