By Barbara Rosasco | Secretary & Treasurer
Continuing challenges caused by the Covid virus endanger the survival of our school.
In accordance with the government's lockdown orders, we were required to close our school for one month - from April 7 until May 6. We were able to open for about one week but then, due to the increasing spread of the COVID virus in Phnom Penh, the government again ordered a partial lockdown and we again had to close our school - this time from May 14 to June 14.
Our school have now been open again for two weeks but student attendance is very light. Most of the students in the drawing/painting class complete their work at home and then bring their art work to Champey for the teacher to make suggestions and corrections. Currently, very few students actually attend in-person class in the drawing/painting class.
Our music classroom is too small and confined to allow us to safely teach a full class so most music students show up only occasionally and rarely are there more than one or two students at a time.
On the dance stage, our numbers are similarly reduced with only five to ten students in attendance for each class, down from usual pre-COVID attendance of 80 to 90 students..
The Cambodian government is pursuing a fairly aggressive vaccination plan so we are hoping that the combination of limited lockdowns and growing vaccination numbers will soon stop the spread of the virus in the Phnom Penh area and things can then start to return to something closer to normal at our school.
Loss of tourist revenue is a big hit for the school
Tourist revenue historically provides an average of 35% of our operating revenue. However, at this point, the start of the next tourism high season in Fall 2021 looks very much in doubt. In total, our revenue from tourist visitors - through the admission fees which they pay and the money which they put into the donation boxes as well as their purchases in our little souvenir shop - accounts for about 35% of Kasumisou Foundation's annual income. Now, having lost the entire season for 2020/2021, we are extremely concerned if we can survive 2021/2022 if we have even a partial tourism season.
We are hoping that we can increase donations enough to be able to keep this program alive.
On July 14, GlobalGiving will host a donor match day and will match donations on a tiered basis:
We are hopeful that you will consider participating in the Match Day as we try to survive these daunting challenges.
We are deeply grateful to you , our kind donors for your generous support.
Mark & Barbara
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
