Roof repairs and toilets successfully funded

I have some fantastic news to share with you this week about the appeal we put out earlier in the month to garner some support for an urgent re-roof of the Oddar Meanchey House of Hope, our vitally important high school boarding house.

This house is home to up to 65 of our brightest and most gifted teenagers from one of the poorest provinces in all of Cambodia and as well as a bed and free nutritious meals, they receive invaluable mentoring from the dedicated married couple who oversee the running of the home. The parents of most of these young people are forced to work over the border in Thailand for the majority of the year, so this house is the one stable constant in their lives.

So it is with a grateful heart that I'm very pleased to report that not only did we manage to receive enough donations to cover the cost of the new AU$7600 roof of the House of Hope, we had enough extra funds come in that we can also bankroll another desperately needed infrastructure project, this one at our Trampoung Primary School 30kms down the road.

The school provides a first class Ministry of Education-endorsed Khmer education to over 550 students, some of whom walk for well over an hour to get there, along with a nutritious meal, often the only one for the day.

As you can imagine, well functioning sanitary facilities are a must with so many students on site each day, but unfortunately the purpose built western-style bathrooms (see pics) that were funded by another international partner and constructed over 12 months ago, failed after only a few weeks and we have been unable to raise the AU$6300 to repair them. In the interim the entire school community has been forced to utilise two very substandard squat toilets (see pics) that are extremely inadequate and pose a significant health risk to students and teachers.

But thanks to the generosity of our donors we now have enough money to re-roof the OM house and get the Trampoung school toilets reinstated and restored to their former glory. We've already ordered the materials for both projects and engaged a builder to undertake the work.

We've informed the OM house occupants and Trampoung school staff and kids of the good news and they can't wait for both projects to be completed.

Thanks again for all your ongoing support and encouragement.