Highlights:
• One of our girls was trafficked, and is still missing.
• Six new children joined, another may join if not sold.
• Medical check-ups for the kids, plus surgery for a palette problem
• Water filters donated, workshop planned
• Field trip to the zoo a success
• Thanks for donations, huge need for specific costs

Devastating
A family withdrew their daughter during the school holidays, saying that they need her for housework. The social worker and project director visited and the family agreed to send her back after the holidays. On the next visit, they said she had begun working, and it is extremely likely that she has been trafficked to sex work. She is a bright, hard-working and gentle girl.

We are now trying to persuade the family to retrieve her. Another case we were slightly involved in where there was clear written evidence of trafficking has ended up naught, and in this case - we don’t know exactly where she has gone, whether she agreed (one of the cruelest tragedies of child trafficking is that the victims feel honour-bound to be sold, or hold themselves to blame in order to protect the family that sold them) and if anyone in the family regrets what they’ve done and will try to help us get her back. Some do, some don’t.

We can’t just go to the police. The families are extremely wary of anyone who works with the police or authorities, with good reason, and getting them involved will destroy their trust in us. Most of all, it will mean the children most at risk, the ones with criminal parents, will not risk working with us.

Please hope for her that someone in her family changes their minds, that another NGO can help us rescue her, that she can find a safe shelter to recover and another chance.

Children in crisis
The social worker heard about a 15 year old girl who was at high risk due to family debts. Her older brother was seriously ill, and the parents refused to send her for boarding as they needed her to care for her brother. She has two older sisters already in sex work.

She was visited on the 14 August, and then followed up with at the end of August. Her brother had died. The Riverkids staff donated some of their own money to the funeral expenses. She is very high risk, so we’re going to try our hardest to persuade the family to place her with us.

We have five children who have been absent for more than four months, so we’re moving them to a n ‘inactive’ list, and giving their places to new children. We have a waiting list, already. If these kids do come back, we’ll give them priority over the other waiting kids.

We need this - can you help?
$30 Six large treated mosquito nets for three sleeping rooms
$50 Mosquito fumigation
$90 A set of school shoes for each child at about $2
$100 Weekly boarder kits - we have enough for 20, and need at least ten more. These are mats, blankets, pillows, baskets, towels and pyjamas.
$190 Annual dental trip for 50+ children
$300 Beach field trip for 50+ children and parents
$300 Chrysalis art therapy course for 12+ teenagers
$350 Annual stationary - pencils, books, everything stocked up for the next few terms (based on last year’s amount)
$450 Three sets per child, about $10
$960 One year’s salary for a Vietnamese language teacher at US$80 a month
$2,400 One year’s salary for an experienced social worker at US$200 a month

You can help!

Medical care

PIX
IRIS, the eye health NGO who organised and helped pay for two eye surgeries for Riverkids, are going to do an annual eye check up for the children. The kids will be taken in two groups of 25 each to the Cyclo Center on 21 October. If any of them need glasses, IRIS will help arrange low-cost spectacles.

PIX
CSI (Cooperative Services International) runs medical and dental programs in Cambodia. On 1 September, a group of CSI’s medical staff came to the Riverkids house and gave medical check-ups to 44 of the children, a full day’s effort. Some were treated for minor ailments, all of them were also dewormed and given vitamin supplements. We’re following up with CSI for future medical care.

PIX
We don’t have the budget yet to take the children for dental care at the CSI clinic, even though it only costs US$1-5 per child, depending on the treatment. Five children were taken on 4 September to the CSI clinic for urgent dental care which cost about US$29, including transportation.

Healthwise, the most urgent and practical areas for us are:
• Immunizations
• Gynacological and reproductive health for the teenage girls
• Nutrition and vitamin supplements where needed
• Tracking the basic health stats for all our children

Immunization looks to be the most expensive. Nutrition and health tracking are underway, and hopefully CSI or another organisation will be able to help with the reproductive health.

A friend in Cambodia recognized a palette problem with one new little girl and arranged for transport, food and free medical treatment for the girl. The surgery to fix a hole in her palette went sucessfully.

Another child has eye and nose problems, and another one appears to have jaundice. Both are under-going tests and treatment at the Ang Doung Hospital and Visal Sok clinic respectively.

New children
Two seven year olds, one with a cleft palette issue and another, the younger brother of a girl already with us, joined in August.

Four more children entered the project in September. They’re all from divorced families. Cambodia and Vietnam have a pretty grim social slant on step-parenting. It’s frequent in re-marriages for the woman’s children especially to be set aside or devalued in favour of the new family. There is less expectation that step-parents will treat the children equally.

One child who dropped out has returned, as her mother changed her mind, which is wonderful!

Household changes
PIX
During the school holidays, the kids had extra tuition on literacy on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then Thursday was for a social education workshop and Friday for games.
Our house-cleaner left to return to school in her home province. She was a great young woman and will do well in her studies. We hired a new house-cleaner who has agreed to also help in the evenings with the children as a part-time housemother.

The children have been organised into three ‘houses’ - Bear, Elephant and Rabbit, to do their chores and encourage some competition and team spirit with a points system for good behaviour.

We’re still having problems with the internet connection and viruses, so that has held up paperwork, but not too badly.

Field trips
We originally hoped to have three or more field trips during the holidays, but the cost is pretty prohibitive for 40-plus kids, and the museum was definitely out - chasing hyperactive kids around priceless artifacts? Not such a great idea. There’s a fantastic water park on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, but the whole trip would cost about US$10 for each child, so we’re taking them to the beach instead which will be a fair bit cheaper.

They went to the National Zoo (a href link) on the 12th August. 38 children went with all the staff to supervise them, plus two of the children’s mothers. We hired two mini-buses and brought mats and food with paper plates and cups, and paid for the entrance tickets. All together, it cost US$278, or about US$10 per child for the entire day - and their first ever experience at the zoo. I wish I had photographs but they were accidentally deleted from the camera. I’m going to get some of the kids’ drawings instead.

Water, water everywhere
If you visit Cambodia, you’ll be warned in all the guidebooks and at the hotels not to drink the tap water. Good advice because you will inevitably get a runny tummy or worse. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere with piped water, it’s not that bad. It’s alright for washing dishes and laundry, and reasonably cheap filters are available for families to clean the water so it’s safe to drink.

But what if you’re in a slum where there is no plumbing? Or on a boat? You go to the river to get water. Maybe you’ll get your water from the center of the river where it looks a bit cleaner. Mostly, you jsut get used to always falling ill.

We were very fortunate to have Stop Exploitation Now (SEN) donate 35 water filters to Riverkids to distribute to our families. One of our teachers uses the exact same brand, so she’s working with the others to put together a demonstration for the families. We have a workshop for the children on water hygeine planned in September, and the water filters will be given out first to the families that attend the parent-teacher meetings, then to the other families on visits.

The tentative date for the workshop is the 20th September.

Staff training
We’ve been really fortunate in getting training opportunities. There’s no formal higher education options for social work in Cambodia, so the NGOs usually run short courses in specific skills. It’s nto just getting the skills, but the boost it gives our staff in getting more educated and professional.

In August and September, staff went for family art therapy, child advocacy, and sexual abuse counselling training.

The two teachers went for Chab Dai’s WEBLINK Good Boy and Daughter training on the 4th and 5th of September. The other staff have had this, and it’s been effective in reaching out to the children and helping communicate about sexual abuse.

We also decided to pay for further training for two staff members - khmer lessons for the social work assistant, whose Khmer is fairly limited, and English lessons for the social worker who is fluent in both Khmer and Vietnamese. The lessons are US$20 a month each.

New needs, desperately needed resources
Weekly boarding has rapidly become our biggest and most intensive project after school support. Parents have been able to see how the children benefit and now trust Riverkids to take care of their children. Quite a few are simply from geography - the families move around for work or live in a far out slum. For these children, Riverkids is the most stable place in their lives.

Weekly boarding will fluctuate based on weather as well. A lot of our families live in boats or on the riverbank in shacks. When the rainy season comes, the boats sometimes tip over (Dale’s children have a lot of stories about suddenly going swimming!) and the families are temporarily homeless. Flooding can also drive them out of their usual places. Boarding means the parents don’t have to worry about their kids’ welfare during the week, or risk them missing school due to bad weather.

We’re looking to hire a Vietnamese language teacher for the ethnic Vietnamese children at Riverkids. Some are already being sent by their parents for tuition occasionally, and we’ve had two families give lack of Vietnamese tuition as a reason for withdrawing their children. One child returned, and the other is at high risk still. Offering Vietnamese is also important because many of these children are from migratory families. They are likely to travel back and forth between Vietnam and Cambodia, and fluency in both languages is a big assest. It will also help the parents feel less marginalized and more accepted by Riverkids.

We’re having problems with mosquitoes at the house. Dengue fever and malaria are real risks in Phnom Penh. We’re fortunate that the house has mosquito screens, but the kids occasionally break them. Getting the house fumigated for mosquitoes would be good, except it costs US$50 for each fumigation. We’ve put in mosquito nets for the children. Medicated nets would be even better.

Chrysalis, a Cambodian NGO, conducts art therapy aimed especially at teenagers. We’d really like to get them to work with our teenagers on expressing themselves without anger or violence, especially about difficult subjects. This would encourage them to draw and journal about their feelings and memories and dreams. For kids who are ’seen not heard’, especially kids who grow up witnessing abuse and trafficking, it can be very hard for them to open up and reveal anything because they’ve built such hard shells to protect themselves.

The proposed course would be US$3 a child per session, for a set of six sessions of three hours each, for about a dozen or so children. That comes up to about US$220 to US$270 for the course, plus another US$50 in snacks and refreshment over the time, approximately US$300.

Thank you!
Huge thank you to Rachel Lewis who organised a second bpal auction. She raised over US$700, spread awareness of Riverkids and did it all with an encouraging good-natured generosity.