Help Destitute Moms with AIDS Care for Their Kids

Please join us ednesday July 18 at 9:00am  for the GlobalGiving 50% rBonus Match Day.

Your contribution  of up to $500 can receive a 50% match.   Matching funds ( $120,000)  will be awarded first come , first served , so please set your clock for 9:00 am New York Time!

How two Kasumisou Foundation projects are helping one student leap forward.

We have written about Vichet's family before, as this family has been in our care, in our Family support Program  (FSP)  since 2002 when Vichet and his brother, orphaned, were being cared for by  their grandmother.  As is the case for many families, over time as the boys grew up, the family split apart , with Vichet remaining with his grandmother. In more recent years, Vichet's young cousin, now age 13 was  also orphaned and came to live in the same household, where we provide  help with housing, social support and other services. Vichet has taken on the responsibility of supplementing the household food budget and works full time. 

As many of you know, our FSP,  while providing essential living support such as food, housing, access to medical care and the like, strongly emphasized the value of education as the primary way to break the chain of inherited poverty. USAID statistics estimate that while 96% of children receive at least some elementary education, just 34% attend lower secondary school and just 21% upper secondary school ( high school) with graduation rates being estimated at a much lower rate.

It is a considerable accomplishment to even make it to high school and diplomas are awarded only upon completion of a difficult  national examination. Vichet’s educational progress was uneven, but he stayed with it and last year completed grade 12. Sadly,  he did not succeed in his first attempt to  pass the national exam for a high school certificate. Despite working full time loading trucks and delivering household products for a distributor, this year Vichet to continue his studies on his own and he was able to pass his exam. Vichet continues to work and makes  about $ 150 per month, most of which goes to pay the family’s food expenses .

Last month Vichet began   attending evening classes,  taking foundation courses in English at Panasastra University in Phnom Penh . He attends classes in the evenings after finishing his work. Vichet is working to prepare for enrollment. Hopefully after completing two semesters of foundation study, Vichet will enter a degree program in English language and literature.

Vichet’s goal is to qualify for work as a tour guide in Phnom Penh. However, he is very intelligent and hard working, so depending upon the results of his university studies we may encourage him to pursue a more ambitions goal for his future.

We hope, in the near future , to invite him to join the staff at our Champey Academy of arts and to live at the school. This would allow him to avoid a very long daily commute between his grandmother’s home in the resettlement district and his job and university in central Phnom Penh.

This project shows how a life can change and catapult forward with the right combination of financial and social support combined with a strong work ethic of a young man determined to lift himself out of poverty.

Vichet's young cousin, is also an excellent student and we have high hopes that she will follow Vichet's example of hard work, determination and family loyalty. 

 Our support of fragile families like Vichet's  is only possible due to the generosity of you, our donors.

We hope that your can join us on July 18^th for the GlobalGiving Bonus Match day to help your donation work even harder.

Barbara & Mark

Mark was in Cambodia in April and  met with each of the families in our program.  At that time, Mark  learned that several of our families were really struggling to make ends meet and that for a few this meant that there was not adequate money for food. 

Official estimates of inflation in Cambodia  have been  in the range of 3% for the past few years,  but unofficially,  as  Phnom Penh continues to " gentrify" and rebuild, rents and other urban prices continue to increase,some times sharply.   Cumulatively, over the past few years, this means that many of our families have seen their food expenditures rise by 10% to 20%   and in some cases, even more . Additionally, the rents that  we pay  on the modest rooms that we provide to  our families have  also continued to increase. All of this means that we will need to increase the monthly support to our families in order to compensate for the overal rise in prices. 

As we have mentioned in previous reports, over the past few years, we have continued to try trim the number of families in our program.  As the economy has improved , and health permitting, some of  our participants have been able to to get part time  work  at modest jobs. For others,  as children in the family  have grown up and become wage earners, these now adult children  can  step in to assist . None the less, we still have a lingering core of about 20 families who are unable to make ends meet and for whom our program's assistance enables them to avoid homelessness and a life on the streets. Instead, they can  have a very modest lifestyle  with dignity. In the first  years of our programs,  the early 2000s , we lost many of the adults in our program to AIDS within 1 to 2 years. Now with changes in medical technology, we are blessed with increased longevity for our program participants,  but this  also creates the need for a much longer than initially  anticipated financial commitment, for these fragile families cannot sustain themselves without assistance and unlike the developed world, there is no social welfare system in Cambodia to assist them. 

We are now in the process of reviewing all our financial committments to our program families so that we can be confident that there is adequate food and shelter.  As a small foundation with limited  resouces, the challenges and impact of inflation are a serious concern to us. The generous and loyal a support of our donors  provides financial assistance to these fragile families and for that, we are truly grateful.

Barbara & Mark Rosasco 

Ms. R and her mother were among the first families admitted to our AIDS Patient Family Support Program when we began in 2000.  Now, 18 years later, Ms. R, who was a todler when she and her mother joined our progream is now a 22 year old student in her final year of study at the Royal University of Agriculture in Phnom Penh.   

At the Royal University, Ms. R. has focused on studies of food science and food pathology. Her mother cleans houses to supplement the modest incomne which the family receives from our program.  The Ms. R  does not have AIDS but is physically challenged by a  a severe limp. However, her determination to achieve success is unstoppable. She peddles her bycycle every day the  many miles between her home and the University campus.

This month, Ms. R. is completing her last semester of classroom study at the University and in her upcoming final semester, she will be working to complete her thesis on plant parasites. She has applied for a $900 grand from USAID  to help her complete her thesis and she will find out this month whether her grant application has been successful.

If Ms. R is successful in completing her program at the Royal University of Agriculture and receiving her bachelor's degree later this year, her dream is then to continue her studies overseas and to pursue a Masters degree in food science. She has recently begun studying Japanese in the hope that she might somehow be able to attend graduate school at a university in Japan.

Ms. R is  one of our success stories and she is a wonderful example that unstoppable determination can lead to remarkable achievements when given just  access to basic education and social support.  

Without the support of the FSP all of these years, Ms.R would likely followed the  sure path to lifetime poverty and exploitation that befalls so many people in similar circumstance. 

We are grateful to you all for your continued support over these many years.

Barbara & Mark Rosasco

Tuesday,  November 28 is Giving Tuesday match day  at GlobalGiving.

A Real Cause for Celebration ! 

Early in 2017 we wrote about a family who has been in our program since 2002. This family, despite crushing adversity still managed to be a family, held together by the strength of a grandmother in her 60s when we first met her in 2002  and who is now nearing 80.

Vichet, the younger of two grandsons, has , from the beginning, remained devoted to his ailing grandmother, stayed at home to help  and continued to study hard in school.  In his spare time he studied English to prepare himself to pursue his dream of becoming a tour guide in Phnom Penh. 

In 2015, at the age of 21, Vichet  finally completed grade 12 and prepared to take the very difficult national examination that  would earn him a high school graduation diploma. Despite his years of hard study, our Vichet,  failed his exam  in 2015 due to the poor quality of his rural education. Students who do not pass the high school  exam are allowed to wait a year and retake  the exam but, without the benefit of a rigorous tutoring program,  chances of success only diminish with time. Having completed  grade 12 and but  failing to receive a diploma, Vichet went to work in a warehouse loading trucks in Phnom Penh.  He  now works  six days per week for $120 per month. 

Despite formidable odds  and despite  working full time, self study and nearly 2 years since leaving high school, we are thrilled to announce that Vichet has passed his exam and earned his High School Diploma!    It is estimated that only 40% of Cambodian students even attend high school.Our Vichet has succeeded because of his hard work and determination.

Vichet still helps his family and will now have to evaluate what opportunities might be next for him in his long journey.

Our joyful congratulations to Vichet for his hard earned success. Your support of this fragile family and others make  this possible and we are deeply grateful to you for your support !

 Barbara & Mark Rosasco

 AIDS Patient Family Support  1998~ 2017

A simple goal :  A normal life with dignity

Thanks to the effectiveness of the antiretroviral medicines which are now widely available to nearly all AIDS patients in Phnom Penh,  our  program has continued to grow smaller.  Beginning in late 2013 we were able to begin scaling down our AIDS patients support efforts. 

In comparison with the average of 70 to 75 women and nearly 125 children whom we routinely supported through those first 14 years of our Family Support Program, we are now supporting 18 women and a similar number of their children.  These are the patients whom we have  concluded would still not be able to survive on their own without our support.  Many of them may never be able to live independently but our hope is that,for those of them who have children, their kids will eventually  be able to take over the responsibility of supporting their mothers.

As we have often said, for these, our core  families, our goal is simple:  to enable them to aspire to a   “ normal” life, to live with dignity  and without fear.  While for most people, these simple goals in life pass without even casual consideration, this accomplishment ,  of providing  the ebb and flow  a “ normal life”  is one of  singular value to our  18 families.

Since its beginning, our AIDS Patient Family Support Program has provided basic shelter, food assistance,utilities and access to medical care as well as focusing on education to help the  children in the program break the cycle of inherited poverty. None of this would be possible without the generous support of you, our donors, and for this we are deeply grateful.

Barbara & Mark Rosasco