Free education for 300 children in rural Cambodia

We hope this finds you well.

The last few months have been somewhat challenging.  We’ve made some small steps forward, and yet somehow, with all the disruption, it feels like we're right back where we were in June, when we sent our last progress report.

Small Steps Forward 

New provisions:

For all of us, face masks have become a necessity in our everyday lives, but they are also a huge contributor to waste! So, in a bid to reduce our footprint whilst keeping our students safe, we provided all of our students and staff with reusable masks. Keeping our community safe and reducing our footprint = win win!! 

Staying active:

Staying active isn’t just good for our bodies, it’s good for our mind, mood, and outlook! And we’ve all needed a little help to boost our moods lately! So we began offering hour long, small group sports sessions to give our students a chance to see some of their friends, and stay active! Our sports field is big enough for our students to run around and exercise while maintaining social distancing, and masks are used to keep risk of infection to an absolute minimum.

In a recent survey of our students, the most common responses to ‘what do you miss most about not going to school?’ were ‘miss friends’ and ‘miss teachers’. Although far from what we would like to provide, we’re thankful that our students have the opportunity to interact with each other and check in with their teachers, giving them just a small degree of normalcy.

With school reopening on all of our minds, our sports coaches have been using some of their non-teaching time to learn Ultimate Frisbee! This fun sport is very physically demanding, and has lessons about fairness and peaceful conflict-resolution built-in. Our coaches have been working hard to learn the rules, skills and ethos of the sport, and hope to add it to the curriculum for our students soon.

Expanding our garden and food provision:

In our recent survey, when asked ‘How has covid-19 changed your parents life?’ An overwhelming 75% of our students said their parents had lost their jobs and didn’t have enough money. This really brings home the dire situation that families are in, struggling to provide even the basic necessities.  As such, our garden has become instrumental in providing essential nutrition. With tools and machinery borrowed from others in the village, the team have worked hard to expand the land and maximise productivity to ensure there's enough fresh fruit and vegetables to share amongst our students.  

A big Setback

Just a couple of weeks ago, after a recent surge in ‘Delta’ cases, large areas of Siem Reap were placed in a ‘red zone’. This is the strictest and most severe level of lockdown, that Siem Reap has previously managed to escape. With little notice, all shops and markets within these red zones were told to close, and there was a scrabble as those living in these areas rushed to stock up on food and supplies.

Residents in red zones are only permitted to leave their homes in an emergency. No outdoor exercise and no shopping for food. As a result, we had to pause our sports classes and distribution of books and worksheets, but more concerningly, we also had to pause our provision of food packs.

This was a very long and worrying week for everyone in the area, but last Monday, we were thankfully able to return to providing food and work packs for our students. With many areas remaining in the red sone, purchasing eggs and rice wasn’t easy! But we were fortunate that our on-site garden remained healthy and was producing lots of fresh vegetables. With work virtually impossible to come by, our community were really relying on this support.  Some of our staff’s homes remained in a red zone and as such, they had to stay at home, but those that were able to, focused their efforts on getting support out to our students. A huge thank you to all of our team, who continue to show such dedication and commitment throughout this really difficult time.

Brighter Horizons:

The good news is that the lockdown was lifted just a couple of days ago, making travel and our provision much simpler.  In addition, Cambodia’s vaccination program has advanced rapidly, with 65% of the population now double vaccinated, and a further 13% partially vaccinated.  Our team are trying to stay positive, and we are hoping with all our hearts that we can get back on track with a full re-opening plan soon.

Please keep our team, and community in your thoughts, and if you're able to offer some support please click this link..

Best wishes, and stay safe!

Jess, Sopheap and all at Helping Hands

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