By Tanya Seeley | Founding Trustee of HOPE
As December approaches and us Westerners start getting excited about Christmas festivities (or stressed about present ideas), the “Young Adults” (YAs) supported by HOPE are getting excited for a whole different reason.
They are entered into the Annual Angkor Bike Ride, a 30km cycle race around the wonderful temples of Angkor on 4th December. HOPE supported some to ride last year and it was such a success that HOPE was keen to repeat it. The YAs were inspired by some of the sponsored cycle rides HOPE had previously arranged in order to raise funds (London - Paris, London - Brighton) and really wanted to help us help them and others like them. They were overjoyed by the sense of achievement they had and really worked well as a team to get each and every one around the course.
This year, the YAs have been training every Sunday morning, up early to avoid the heat of the day. (Read for yourself some of the diaries of the young riders – below). Not only is this great exercise, but its teaching them discipline, getting them out into the countryside and giving them a goal. In addition they are all motivated to improve on their previous times – and I think there is a little bit of competition building!
As one of the founding Trustees of HOPE, I am also overwhelmingly excited since this year I am able to join fellow HOPE trustee, Jo Owen and all the YAs to take part in this years’ event myself. I will be back in Cambodia for 2 weeks visiting all the HOPE sponsored projects so look forward to updating all supporters in the New Year.
During 2010, HOPE extended its support to two new Young Adult Programmes, which again is very exciting. We have been able to share ideas, experiences and lessons learnt from the Sangkheum YA Programme rather than reinvent the programme from scratch. We are very proud of this.
HOPE has paid the entrance fee for each YA ($15) and will be providing a few prizes for outstanding achievement. Your support has been a great help to enable us to give 40+ eager and enthusiastic YAs a goal. Donating today will help HOPE reach its goal of supporting more young adults to gain key life skills in preparation for independent life.
Thank you for your continued support.
Here are two diaries from two YAs who took part in recent training:
I did bicycle training on Sunday last week. It was great, but now I’m very tired. I have never experienced riding bicycle for such a long distance. On the road, I saw rice fields, houses, landscapes and a lot of people. Last Sunday, we rode for 23 kilometers. While I was riding the bike I could feel the cool air in my face. Also, I saw a golf field. This was the first time ever that I saw one!
Hello, my name is Sopheak and I’m 16 years old. I am a student at Anjali House. On Sunday, I practiced for the bike race. First we met at Soria Moria Hotel and we got a t-shirt. After that, they told us the route that we needed to practice. Then, they took a photo of all the people together. 5 minutes later we left from the hotel and started the training. We rode a long time and we went through the country side. We saw rice fields, cattle, birds, a lot of green, and especially a lot of cool air.
I felt very exciting because this was the first time for me. I hope I will join again. It was a little hard for us to ride, because there was a lot of wind, so we couldn’t ride very fast. But it is fine!
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