Education/Arts Orphan, Disabled Children Cambodia

Dear Kind Donors,

We Thank you all from our Hearts for helping our School take care of all our Children and for helping save Lives.

In our emergency appeal last month, I wrote of two Children who had been found living on the street. Later we were asked by the local authorities to take care of five Street Children. Happily we were able to track down the families of three of these Children and reunite them.

However, those Children who live with us permanently from early Childhood until they are independent adults, do not have families at all, or they have suffered extreme abuse and must be protected. These are the invisible Children and those completely forgotten.

Although they have suffered so much, but yet our School is a place of Joy and this Joy is contagious. Early in the morning they get on their bicycles to go to state school, with one of our Music Teachers ferrying the smallest Children to kindergarten. Then they come back home for lunch and a rest and then they have their Dance and Music lessons, then more play, dinner and homework. Our Blind Students have their Music Training too. In between lessons, the Students from TrayKoh District School come for their free Pin Peat Music lessons and then are transported back home.  These Students come from severely impoverished areas of Kampot.

We are also constantly called for Emergency cases and also for cases of severe malnutrition, not only for Children, but for adults who are very poor and sick or elderly or disabled. We also provide shelter for abused parents with small Children.  Last month we were asked to help with an expatriate person found in extremis at the hospital.  For this poor person, I sent my own personal savings, as we could not with our currently low School funds, take from our budget. We were then able to care, feed and wash them in hospital. Alas, they passed away on the 17th October.  We have over the last two and a half years, fed over five thousand people and three thousand Children all over Kampot Province.

Our School is within large gardens. At the beginning, everything was a rubbish dump and when constructing our School, human bones were found, having been pulled by animals from the next door Court House, where the Khmer Rouge had tortured and executed people. Later, a special ceremony was given to Pray for the dead and to Bless them.

We have four buildings. The first building, sponsored by the British Embassy in 1994, is our Children's Library, Emergency Shelter room (originally our office) and my own Bedroom. That is where I always stay and have stayed since 1994 when in Cambodia, allowing me to be on call 24 hours.   For this building, I laid the bricks for part of the Southern wall!

Fish ponds were made in 1994, the old trees were preserved, as well as the Sacred Boddhi Tree and Stupa which is next to my room and which dates back 400 years and not 200 as first thought.  Later I was to ask the Bokor National Park for rare tree saplings and these have become tall trees to the front of our School, conserving the traditions from the National Museum and University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh and helping our School stay fresh and full of little birds and wildlife.

We are also a serious Traditional Cambodian Music and Fine Arts School and we symbolize the revival and conservation of ancient Cambodian cultural heritage for future generations of Cambodians. As such we are recognized by UNESCO.

For many years in Kampot there was war. The Khmer Rouge stronghold in Phnom Voar, site of the terrible hostage crisis in 1994 and the focal point of many atrocities from 1970 - 1998. The local hospital in Kampot was a disaster. There I used to take care of tuberculosis patients who were left to die in their own filth, without food or proper medical care. I used to wash their wards as well.  Later I was to get tuberculosis of the upper spine.  Now the hospital is much better and the war has ended, but tuberculosis, which most often affects thoserun-down and malnourished, still kills many.

Around 70% of Cambodia's population lives in rural areas. Although there has been improvement in towns and for those who live by the main road, however for many who live in more remote rural areas, as well as those struggling in urban cities, life has got much more difficult. We have found as a whole, that more people are malnourished and left behind, as the price of goods continues to rise. A family will sell their house or livestock because of an emergency. For complicated medical procedures people need to go to Vietnam and cannot.  Many people still live in thatched palm huts without running water or latrines. Hundreds are falling into impossible debt in the "new scheme" launched by government lending banks. My Blind Students who sing "Smoet", the special lament for the dead, during funerals, get to hear many tales of extreme hardship.

Although the Minister of Culture is a good and stalwart supporter of our School, other more powerful government members are the adult children of those who were in power since 1979. These new leaders were placed into power by the former prime-minister last year after the "elections".  In an attempt to woo foreign investment and to re-paint Cambodia as a successfully growing economy and often with the complicity of foreign governments and economic forums, it has become taboo, almost illegal, to talk about poverty. But one must make a stand, otherwise who else will speak out the Truth?

As one of my Blind Students said, "Yeung gno sniem, bahn sok" - which translates as, "If we are Quiet, we will "have" good health."  This is a reference to the spate of arrests and assassinations of those who dissent.

In visitng our School last August, the British Ambassador said to me, (although I cannot remember his exact words), "It is in places like this. Small communities who do good, regardless of what is going on around them, that the world continues"

Our School then is an Oasis for Children who have been so damaged. It is a place that resounds to the Sound of Music, of laughter and the call of many birds. We have been running since 1994 and those who were once with us, have now families of their own, some are professional Musicans and Dancers, others run their own company, work for businesses or own farms and most have their own families now and bring them to see us regularly. Some of their Stories I have already shared.

As the founder, I bear the weight of the well-being of all those in my care and have done for three decades... I keep knocking on doors to ask for a donation or some rice or other support. Sometimes the door is opened, but more often it is tightly shut.  Sometimes we do not fit a particular critieria, especially because now, the care of Children who are Orphaned is not "fashionable", regardless of the realities of every day life. Many individuals also do not respond.  One could say, "Many are called. Few are Chosen and Fewer still respond."  Sometimes a person will treat me badly, but though I might withdraw I remain ever the same.

The world seems engulged in war and tragedy, anger and darkness. In every part of the world, Children are suffering. But they are All our Children and we are All Connected. We all feel what is going on in the world, even if we are not consiously aware. We are the guardians of all Children in the world.

In a way, instead of opening our Hearts to help more, I have found that this has made people afraid and so they help less.  But yet in truly Giving, we never run out.  For example, during the pandemic, I was in Italy with my Son. Being a professional Musician and unable to work was rather challenging. I used to give him my food and got wobbly teeth and fainting spells as a result, but, whenever a friend of his called, in a more difficult state than we were, miraculously there was always enough to feed them with. A  dear kind Friend gave a Christmas present from afar and I was able to buy my Son a much needed winter coat.  Near the end of one month, with only about $11 in my pocket, I met a homeless man selling socks and gave what I could to him. All the while I ran our School in Cambodia,long-distance and ensured that everyone was housed and fed and made sure that donors and institutions didn't panic and forget to assist our Children. We even got extra funds to provide hot meals to four thousand people who were literally starving!

Sometimes when everything seems dark, that is when we have to be most epecially brave. If we shut our hearts and treat others badly, because we are afraid, then the darkness wins. For the sake of all Humanity, we have to choose Goodness and Light.  Even though there is terrible war and suffering, we can all play our part and share real Love and Kindness. It is like planting seeds in a barren garden and carefully watering and tending the saplings. With Time, a Beautiful Garden bursts forth and will grow into eternity. Then Light and Love wins over all things.

Links:

• Official website
• Official Facebook

Dear Kind Donors,

It is with enormous gratitude that I write on behalf of our School, because it is because of yourselves, that we are able to keep our School open and running, allowing us to take care of those Children who have been completely forgotten by society.

On August the 3rd 2024, our School will celebrate our 30th Anniversary since our Founding in 1994. It will be 32 years also since the Founding of our Cambodian NGO, the Khmer Cultural Development Institute. When then still barely out of adolesence I went on my red bicycle to the Supreme National Council in Phnom Penh, with the documents for ratification in my front basket!

As founder, I look back through the three decades since building our School in the midst of war. The Gratitude I personally feel for my beloved Staff and Children, for all those who have helped us, has no bounds.

Through war and peace, ups and downs, immense challenges, bereavement, but also sublime joy, has been an act of Pure Faith. When others gave up, gave discouraragement, when my life was threatened with kidnap and death and our School was threatened by soldiers with AK47 machine guns, or we were hunted by those with M16s, when dear colleagues and friends were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in the outlying districts, when extreme poverty and malnutrition cut short life expectancy, when there was shelling and the earth shook and our Children threw themselves on the ground in terror, one just kept going. We never lost our sense of humour or compassion. It made no difference if outside our walls, there was corruption or violence, one made sure that a Light was shining within oneself. 

We have cared for each other in grave sickness and nursed those dying. In my early youth, I would happily carry huge sacks of rice, until tuberculosis of the spine prodded me into carrying rather lighter things, but still I do hard physical labour. We are not perfect, but there is pure Love. That Kindness that comes from the Heart and transcends all boundaries.  My dear Colleagues who have done so very much and especially those great Masters who have dedicated their later years, their lives to our School and to preserving Traditional Cambodian Music and Culture, so that it be saved for future generations.

Each one of you has undertaken this Journey with us through your generosity, your thoughtfulness and goodwill.

Those Children of 1994, of 2004, 2014, most with their own Children, some running their own businesses, some whom I have mentioned in earlier reports such as Lyda and Ngeth, Radi, Sambo and Kim Song are prominent Musicians and Dancers in Cambodia, with amongst many others,Sopheap and SreyMao working as Music Teachers. Then there is Kunthea who had Polio and took a Bachelors degree in Economics and now lives with her husband and Children in China, Sreyveth who worked first in the Ministry of Culture to help notate all the thousands of Music Pieces almost lost to the Khmer Rouge genocide and then who transfered to the Council of Ministers. There is Sameth who lost both his legs to an anti personnel mine and who won scholarships in Thailand and  Switzerland and who runs a luxury hotel in Siem Reap.  There are Navy, Ra, Puthy who work in Thailand and their brother Sok Mo in Battambang. There is Nary and Sreydet and Sreychea who work for business companies. There are so many of our dear Children, too many to write here, but we hope that they all will come on the 3rd of August, with their own families. 

In the earlier days, many of our Children had lost their Parents directly or indirectly because of the War. They had been killed in rocket attacks, because of mines, or had died of tuberculosis or malaria or preventable diseases and childbirth.  Now many of our Children have lost their parents because of Aids, other diseases such as tuberculosis and cancer, traffic accidents, but also abandonment. After the genocide and many decades of war, after the deaths of a third of the population and especially educated people, the social fabric of Cambodia was seriously damaged. This was exacerbated by the Cambodian government dictating the narrative of the Khmer Rouge genocide, many of themselves being ex members of the Khmer Rouge, thus not allowing ordinary people to speak freely, express their trauma adequately and find some form of vital healing.  Indeed it is this latter, on the need for transcendent expression, to relieve trauma, which really pushed me to build our School in the first place, because as a professional Musician I knew the Healing power of Music. I had also witnessed firsthand, whilst teaching Violin at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, that the Traditional Music of Cambodia was then in danger of disappearing, there being only five great Music Masters left alive. 

The collective unexpressed trauma of the People of Cambodia,  reflects itself today in the number of cases of abandonment and serious abuse carried out on Children by extended family members, or neglect caused by drug or alcohol use by a parent or relative.  Today we have Eleven young Girls and One very young disabled woman in our Care. All the Girls have endured serious abuse, neglect, or been in dangerous situations, with only three enduring severe poverty marginalization as the mitigating factor. Our young Boys include those whose Parents have abandoned them, been incarcerated or they are Children who have lost completely, everybody. We also have four Blind Youth and one of our Girls is sighted in one eye only.  From early Childhood until Youth we take full time care of them,  they have a complete scholastic education until Baccalaureate (A level), Traditional Cambodian Music and Performing Arts tuition at the highest level, Vocational Training for those planning on developing career skills and assistance with transition into University or Teaching College, if required.

As you all know, we also have an Emergency Temporary Shelter for battered women with small Children, pregnant, homeless mothers, parents in grave difficulty and Children found by the authorities wandering on the streets or in life threatening situations. We have our Emergency Food Package Program for those most vulnerable and suffering from malnutrition and destitution in Kampot Province and we give free Tuition in Cambodian Music and Dance to the Primary School Students of TaPream School in TrayKoh District, Kampot.  

For all our Programs we coordinate with the local authorities, our Childsafe Partners and even sometimes the police. Our Staff do regular training in Childcare, Child Protection and also PSEA.

If you would like to help our School still further, please share this Newsletter and Appeal with your family and friends and if you are able, please kindly donate too!

To Donate, Please Read the Following Information>

On the 10th July, 2024, we will participate in the wonderful GlobalGiving Bonus Day, where GlobalGiving will give incentive matching funds to Donations of $100 upwards. It begins at 09.00 EDT, July 10th. The campaign will last either until matching funds run out, or at 23.59.59 on the same day. Please use this project link to Donate!

Thank you for your Wonderful Life affirming Help and Kindness!

With Every Kindest Wish and much Love from us all at our School in Kampot!

Recent Photographs courtesy of Steve Porte and made with the permission of our Children and Staff. KCDI Photograph from 1994 by DI Brown.

Links:

• Official website
• History
• Official Facebook page