Highlights

Dale’s Sept 30- Oct 5 trip report
Beach trip
Trafficked girls
New school term started
Three kids in mission school

EVENTS

Beach trip
Saturday, October 1 full day trip with all the children, including a few younger siblings and sixteen sets of parents from twenty (out of thirty-plus) who had said they would come. This was higher than showed up for the zoo trip. We had about a dozen-plus kids stay overnight because the bus got back too late for them to cross the river. The photographs and beach trip report are online.

Workshops
The water hygeine workshop is October 19, with the outline written, the water hygeine pamplets and posters translated from Khmer and English to Vietnamese as well, and all the parents invited. A report on that will go up shortly.

We discussed the next workshop, aiming to do one every month or so. It will probably be on domestic violence or children’s rights.

EDUCATIONAL CARE

Another year of school!
School uniforms, bags and stationary were handed out. The term started a little late because the school hadn’t finished assigning classes, but by the second week of October, everyone was attending as regular.

New Life School
Three of our children have transferred to the New Life Fellowship International Chirstian School.

Lyna chose the ones with the best grades and best behaviour. One of the trafficked girls’ siblings should have qualified, but we decided not to enroll him as a result of the family’s dysfunction. This will be a ‘carrot’ to push them to return their trafficked daughter.

The two girls are in Grade 3, and the boy is in Grade 2. The school has a much better teacher-student ratio, actual educational materials and a full afternoon immersion program for english. We had to get the parents’ permission as it’s a christian school, although we made sure that they would not be pressured to convert. It’s comparatively pricey at $15 a month, plus $8 for lunch.

Vietnamese lessons
We started Vietnamese lessons for the kids at an extra hour plus Monday to Friday. The children refused to attend after about a week, saying that they couldn’t cope with a third language and the extra tuition. We’re going to rework the classes to be shorter and more playful and get the parents (who originally requested the classes) involved. This is only for the ethnic Vietnamese kids who ar are already fluent in spoken Vietnamese.

MEDICAL CARE

Medical care
Phy Sophon will visit the clinics, hospitals and health NGOs we have contacts with to find a way to do immunizations for about sixty children. We’d like to do that before year-end, and if it’s possible extend it to the younger siblings and possibly families.

New kids and returned kids had several dental visits. The CSI dental clinic is cheap which helps enormously. One boy has three front teeth, a condition commonly handled in babies, so he needs an appointment fast.

IRIS will be conducting annual eye check-ups for all our kids over two sessions on 21 October, and they’ll supply spectacles as needed.

One little girl was sponsored outside of Riverkids funds for palette surgery. Unfortunately, the family did not follow the aftercare instructions and the wound re-opened. The staff and family were embarassed and didn’t want to go back to the doctor because they were worried they would get into trouble. We’re scheduling a follow-up once the parents agree to either follow-up better or, if they can’t, to leave her in weeky boarding during the two week recuperation.

TRAFFICKED GIRLS AND TURNING KIDS AWAY

Trafficked girls
Riverkids is compiling a report on what we’ve down so far for the two trafficked girls, and our strategies for the next situation. Because it will happen again.

Without intervention, 30-40% of children are trafficked in this community, and around 80% of our kids’ siblings are in sex work. This doesn’t include other types of trafficking. Basically, less than 20% of our kids can expect to be adults with a non-horrific job.

On the one hand, the parents are continuing to talk with us and are saying that they do not want their girls doing sex work. Both of the girls have siblings still attending Riverkids. They’re had three years of education and are really sweet and well-behaved girls.

Stacked up against them are that their parents have debts behind the ‘coffeeshop’ job, and are refusing to acknowledge what they’ve done. The girls have already had to turn down alternative safe jobs because of their parents. The coffeeshop is next to a notorious place, the owner has lied several times and the longer the girls are in that environment, the more likely they will co-operate when the traffickers have groomed them enough.

The coffeeshop where they’re working is in a high-risk area, right next to one that’s been busted and a notorious hotel. The owner’s being caught in several lies already and it’s just - incredibly frustrating. The girls won’t leave without their parents’ consent, and we can’t ask the police or a rescue NGO to intervene until they’re already prostitutes. Even then, shelter recidivism is really high without family support.

Turning away children
Painfully, we had to decline two young boys from entering. The family is very poor and the boys are almost certainly not going to go to school without help. There’s an older sister who does qualify which would allow us to enrol the boys under our siblings-also policy, but the family want her to stay with their grandfather in the province. There are lots of cultural and economic reasons to keep the girl out, but it comes down basically to the girl’s future traded for the grandfather’s present, a tough choice.

We will try find another NGO that can work with them, and we’ll keep talking with the family.

INDIVIDUAL CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

Three-year olds
Currently, we only take in children who are old enough for kindergarten, approximately four years old. Two families requested that we take in their three-year-olds for weekly boarding and we agreed to try it as one older sibling was skipping school to provide childcare, and the other family were struggling as the mother couldn’t work full-time. One child returned after a week, and we’re still evaluating the other.

Long-term fostering
One child switched from week-end fostering to full-time fostering with the family caring for him. They signed a letter (copy with identifying details removed) and he will be visited regularly both at home and at the Riverkids office. He’s attending the same mission school as our other three bright kids, and is flourishing, academically and emotionally. He’s the only child in Riverkids who does not have a family capable of caring for him a a true orphan. He continues to be under his older sister’s legal guardianship.

Five returned kids
Five girls who had attended early in 2006 but dropped out from early May to the school holidays, returned for the October school term. This is even better than signing up five more kids because these are particularly vulnerable children.

Homeless family
One homeless family is still on the streets. We discussed possible alternatives, but they don’t want to live in a shelter or rent a place - living in tents and a cart suits their recycling work better, although it places their kids at risk, including health issues. It looks like long-term, the only solution is to get them into a different trade.

PAPERWORK, TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE ISSUES

Reporting
We need to put in expense report paperwork, and to get reports that are already written up on paper, like the kids’ attendence, sent as a summary online to the trustees and Dale Edmonds.

We have heights and weights of all the kids, about six months apart. We’re going to schedule them for every three months, when they get dewormed as well.

Trust status
The trust deeds are somewhere over the Pacific heading back to Singapore for their last signatures and submission. During one meeting in the trip, we went through the trust documents and what it would mean in day-to-day management. We went over all our financial records, because in about six months I think we have to be audited. Everything was fine, but it was good to be able to explain that it’s not just optional but required now. The biggest change is just going to be setting up more external deadlines for monthly reports.


Staff Training and discipline issues
Sok Lyna and Phy Sophon attended Leadership training sponsored by World Vision from 9-13 October.

One of our housemothers will go for a fairly long and intensive training course on child care, run by HOSEA. It’s three days a month for five months, and part of the aim is that she will at the end be able to give parenting classes herself.

Regarding staff training, Riverkids has decided to subsidize half of relevant training that staff go for, such as English lessons. Sok Lyna will do a basic accounting course so she can handle finances and to help with her next project, vocational training involving families of trafficked kids. We’re already agreed to cover Khmer lessons for one, but any subsequent training will only be 50%.

We’re having some discipline problems - the kids are much better behaved, but the staff are being too harsh with them. This is mostly the teachers who are pretty traditional. We don’t allow physical punishment which the schools do, so instead they use points, time-outs and reprimands. It’s the reprimands that are going against our Child Protection Policy. I spoke with another NGO and they’ve offered to do a one-day workshop for our staff on ways to discipline kids, what the Child Protection Policy means in practice. This is for things like saying to a child “You’re lazy and stupid” or “Do that again and we will send you away forever”. It’s common culturally (Although child abuse is high, hitting as a parental discipline is generally frowned on in Cambodia) to use verbal threats, but we need to do and be more.

Also, talking to another NGO, as part of the workshop we need to revise the CPP to make it more pragmatic and direct.

FUTURE PLANS

Exploring microcredit bank accounts set up for every child, using small savings contributions to encourage attendence and performance.

We need to track Cambodian news more closely, especially rumours of relocation. Until we’re officially registered, we can’t risk talking openly about politics and the Vietnamese community in Cambodia.

We will probably get a TV next month for the kids as a very strictly-regulated reward, and so we can start playing English kids’ DVDs for them.

Looking ahead, our next hire will probably be an office assistant because that will free up time for our existing staff to do more of their work.

We’ve had counseling offered for several months now, but it’s still not as regularly scheduled or as effective as we’d hoped. Part of it is that most counseling is taking place during family visits, and the children need to be reached in less traditional ways - art therapy, games and so on. We’re reacting to crisis, not quite getting in and helping the kids get stronger and emotionally skilled ahead of a crisis.

Capacity
Weekly boarding is a huge success as a program that clearly meets community needs, delivers targets - it’s hit the ground running and really built up confidence and helped kids with safe harbour for the most vulnerable kids. We’ve grown to up to thirty kids, full capacity for now.

We discussed our total capacity, and it’s basically limited by the size of the house. If we had more staff and funding, we could take up to 30-40 boarders, with up to 120 schoolkids if they were handled in two shifts. But when someone really really rich and generous gives us a million bucks, the next stage would be to open a second house on the other side of the river to reach those families, and add a room for vocational training.

Thank you! to so many people who have donated and helped in so many ways. We've been running for over a year now at this stage and it's pretty amazing. Have a look at our last October 2005 report and see how far we've come!

Thank you especially to our Sixty Good People donors.

Please help!