Children
There were forty-three kids at state school, thanks to late enrollments. A pair of twins took two weeks off during October for a family emergency, but will be back by November. Two other children were withdrawn due to family problems, but we’re hopeful about getting them back into the program soon.

The driver’s son has been transferred to the same school as the children, so his dad can bring him along as well. I need to doublecheck whether we’re paying for his school fees etc. and he’s getting tuition - I would rather have a slot for a poorer kid.

Once we have a better idea of the financial situation of each family, we want to come up with a way for the families to contribute. At the moment, the parents are paying some of the daily school fees, about US$5 a month.

Project
We have the resumes for the Vietnamese and English teacher, the social worker and Lyna. I’m going to put them up with links from the front page.

I’m expecting in a week a batch of forms on the children - these worksheets. I won’t be releasing the raw data because of privacy issues, but I’ll be compiling it for the overall numbers and probably releasing a few stories of the children, with their names removed, so you can understand better the lives of these kids.

Costs
We’re adding on about US$24 for bottled water bought for the kids to drink during tuition classes.

More than US$500 was left in balance from September, so we’re using that to offset October. This has also allowed us to switch the time we send over money. Previously, everything had to be paid for at the start of the month, but now that things are on a bigger scale and more organized, we are paying only Kindercare at the start of the month, with the other bills mostly occuring throughout the month, and we send money over in the 3-4th week. This is a lot easier for me and Jim, instead of our usual ‘first-of-the-month’ panic.

Meals remain an issue for me - logistically, it’s tough feeding forty kids in one place, but I hope by December or January to be able to hire someone from within the community to cook lunch rather than the parents buying food for the kids. The problem is that while most of the parents are buying food for their kids, some are using the food money for personal things and letting the kids go hungry. If we can’t do it on a large scale, we might try identifying the hungry kids and arranging for them to eat with another family, but this becomes a status issue, with parents complaining over unequal treatment.

The only extra costs this month were uniforms, stationary and enrollment for five late kids.