Crowdfunding for our Cambodia Sensory Spaces

The Trustees are very sorry that this update is delayed - this is simply a reflection of the volume of work as we (hopefully) exit the global pandemic. We continue to be very grateful for all of your support.

We are currently in the process of finalising our annual return to the charity commission for England and Wales. We're a small charity with only four volunteer Trustees so this is not something we can delegate to anyone else (we don't have any employees) and we have had to focus on preparing that report rather than sending this update earlier than we have done.

Nonetheless, we're here now! In the meantime, pending release of our latest annual review and annual report, I have been reflecting on the successes that SicKids has had in Cambodia since our charity was set up, including:

1. Creation of the most up-to-date sensory space in Cambodia: located in Sihanoukville, South West Cambodia. This sensory space was so successful – and contributed to promoting the development of children with special needs and developmental delay – that it was followed up by a further three spaces, two of which were built in outreach locations for the children unable to be brought to the main centre
2. Creation of a sensory space at Battambang Referral Hospital near Siem Reap, Northern Cambodia
3. Creation of a sensory space at Safe Haven, a community organisation providing services for disabled children
4. Pioneering a new model of mobile sensory space [the “Sensory Tent”] which Safe Haven will use to take into the field to use with disabled children. The feedback from this pilot will, hopefully, enable us to work out a way of replicating this in the UK
5. Provision of a series of outreach grants to enable UK professionals to travel to Cambodia to both participating in humanitarian outreach work as well as sharing skills and contributing to professional development of the grant recipients, who will also undoubtedly use their experiences for the benefit of children back here in the UK

This year we have focused on fundraising and we are so grateful to our GlobalGiving supporters for your help. We are very proud of what we have achieved and we hope that this has contributed to the building of child safe communities with happy, healthy, and safe children and young people at their hearts.

We look forward to 2023 where the trustees will be meeting early in the year to review our successes, look at future opportunities, and to determine our post-pandemic strategy. In the meantime could we please take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy start to the New Year 2023 which will be upon us in little more than a few weeks.

With kind regards,

Dianne, Den, Jenny, and Andrew

The Board of Trustees of SicKids

Charity: 1164131

Links:

• SicKids Twitter Handle
• Search for us on Google
• Our financial reporting and annual reports