Photo from Friends of Grady Grossman School
Kari Grossman, another parent of an adopted child from Cambodia, is doing great work in country. She funded a school in a remote part of Kampong Speu Province. She has just started a blogand will be blogging from Cambodia her next trip in January.
She is also planning to publish a book soon - I'll have more on that later. In the meantime, she's a wonderful photographer, enjoy her Cambodian photos!
I’m the parent two wonderful children, Harry and Sara, who were adopted
as orphans from Cambodia. My children have food everyday, clothing, go
to school, have toys (probably too many), and many other necessities of
life that we in the US often take for granted. When we were in Cambodia, many
Cambodian people came up to us and said “Your child is very lucky!” We would
reply, now we’re lucky parents. But in some respects, they were
right. The infant mortality rate in Cambodia is very high, so my
children are lucky to be alive.
When we adopted our beautiful children, we also adopted their birth
country. We have embraced Khmer culture and we also feel a
responsibility to give something back to the country, particularly to
seriously disadvantaged children in Cambodia. Soon after coming home
with our first child nearly seven years ago, I volunteered for the Sharing Foundation,
an ngo that works directly with local officials, orphanages, and NGOs
in Cambodia to identify and carry out projects which improve the lives
of children. I now serve on the board.
There’s lots of could tell you about TSF and I encourage you to
visit the web site so you can get an sense of the scope of the good
work this organization does. One of its focus areas is education. Over
1,300 children in Cambodia receive educational support every day as a
result of The Sharing Foundation initiatives. The Foundation has
increasingly focused its efforts on ways to create and improve
educational opportunities for Cambodian children of all ages, including
public school projects, pre-school, Khmer literacy, English language
instruction, high school and college sponsorships, and vocational
training. These projects present what might be the only means for the
most disadvantaged children to life themselves, as well as their
families, out of poverty conditions, become self-reliant and lead more
productive, hopeful lives.
The Foundation is now its second year of college sponsorships. Last
year, our family stepped forward to sponsor Leng Soparath, an orphan
from Kampong Speu orphanage. For a gift of $750 annually, TSF is able
to cover her college fees and living expenses. (It is a stretch for us
... we’re not rich but this could make such a difference in the life of
one young person) In addition to money, we provide emotional support
and encouragement through regular letters and photographs that we
exchange. Our letters are hand-carried to Cambodia by Sharing
Foundation’s 76-year old founder, Dr. Nancy Hendrie. Watch the video for more information.
I’ve also documented our correspondence with Leng Sopharath in flickr (here, here, here, and here).
While TSF has paid staff, Cambodians, in Cambodia to manage all its
programs, the work done in the US (primarily fundraising) is all
volunteer-driven. Almost of the money raised comes from grassroots
efforts and primarily done offline as well as some web fundraising.
(See these wonderful examples.)
So, when I saw the fundraising widget, it looked like a natural
extension of the type of grassroots fundraising that we’ve been doing
offline. And I might add that our family has made a commitment to
sponsor Leng Soparath through graduation and we ask our friends,
family, and colleagues to help us. Even my kids contribute money from
their piggy banks and direct birthday money to the effort.
How you can help
1. Make a contribution: A little bit of money in Cambodia goes a long way. Click on the ChipIn badge above to charge your contribution.
2. Blog about the campaign and include campaign badge: Help tell the story aout why a college education for someone in Cambodia is so important. To copy the badge code,simply click on the HTML icon on the badge and cut and paste the code into your blog post. Here's a screencast that shows you how.
3. Click on the Video and Ad: The campaign video is in Revver which is advertiser based and pays per click through. You can also add the video to your blog by copying the code. All proceeds will be donated to support this project.
Last night we attended a performance of Sandglass and Sovanna Phum (Here too)- the culmination of these two artists working together from different cultures, puppetry traditions, and language. What they produced was gorgeous, brilliant, and exceptional. It was a fusion of khmer/American artistry like I haven't seen.
We took Mongkol - and after a quick dinner at Whole Foods, we had a fabulous evening. My camera really sucks at taking indoor photos (probably something stupid about the settings I'm not doing) or maybe it is me. Mongkol, the expert photographer he is, has some beautiful ones here. I used them to create the slide show above.
Mongkol did a great write up here. He points out our meeting with a blog reader who recognized us!
However, that’s not all. While we were waiting for the Q&A session with the artists, we noticed one white guy approaching us from the distance. Surprising us from behind, he said, “Hello Mongkol and Beth! How are you? Mongkol, how are things going with your study?” At first I thought he was Beth’s friend, but yet how did he know my name? Hmmm.. A big question, huh? Only later did I find out that his name was Decker and he was one of our regular blog readers. Decker is from the UK and currently resides in Providence. He loves Cambodia and viewing Cambodia-related blogs is one of his ways to get in touch with Cambodia. Well, what a coincidence! Nice to meet you, Decker! :D I hope to see you again sometimes. :p
I took a lot of video clips and I'm editing them and will post later.
Kbahl, Snah, Joung Khoung, Neong! (Translation: "Heads, Shoulders, Knees & Toes") is a song that we translated into Cambodian for culture classes here in the US for children adopted from Cambodian. I brought a copy along when I was in Cambodia for the pre-school opened at the Roteang Orphanage by the Sharing Foundation.
