(Written in early 2006!) The RiverKids Project
started back in 2001 when we adopted two children from
Cambodia. Uncovering the truth behind their adoptions, we
discovered they had been trafficked. We were incredibly
fortunate and were able to find our children’s birthfamily,
adopting two more siblings.
Trafficking devastates the children, their families and
their communities. It is a huge problem in our children’s
birth community.
Families need support to care for their children, and some
families need to learn to care for their children. Stopping
trafficking before it destroys children’s lives isn’t easy.
But it’s a lot easier than recovery for a child sold and
lost.
RiverKids started with tuition and school support for a few
children. We’ve grown to over fifty children from thirty
families, creating a safe place for the children to study
and play, encouraging their families, arranging basic
medical care and better nutrition, and most of all, giving
these kids a chance.
Cambodia is a beautiful country with a rich turbulent
history. The genocide in the 1970s devestated the country
socially and economically. Right now, the government barely
provides social services and poverty, corruption and
internal migration make life very hard for ordinary people.
Much of Cambodia’s population is young, uneducated and
poor.
The community we work in is by the river, the Ton Le Sap,
that runs through the capital, Phnom Penh. Their families
can barely keep their kids fed, let alone send them to
school. The kids end up trapped in the same poverty cycle.
We started with the children of a neighbour who had helped
our children. Slowly we added some more children until in
early 2005 we had twelve children at kindergarten and
school. The children had overcome huge obstacles and were
flourishing. Other families wanted their children to join,
but we didn’t have the resources for more.
So in August 2005, we took a deep breath and decided to
fundraise. We were incredibly fortunate and so far have
managed to keep things going. Forty-three new children
joined the project. We got a room for their afterschool
tuition and hired another fulltime teacher, bought
uniforms, stationary, schoolbags and books, hired a social
worker to keep track of all the kids and help individual
families and a driver to take them from school to class and
back.
We operate on a very tight budget and all our finances are
available online. To make sure parents are committed to
their children’s education, we ask them to pay part of the
school fees.
It costs about US$2,000 a month for the project, with a big
annual bump in September when the school year begins for
uniforms, registration and so on. We operate on a
shoestring, and we keep all our finances available online
so you can see where your donations go.
Thanks to regular donors, we cover most of the expenses,
but we can’t afford to expand the project or do any more
services without help
We visit every other month and thanks to support from
amazing donors, we’ve been able to arrange eye and brain
surgery, toys, children’s books, dental care and more.
We would love to reach out to more children. To provide
respite care for abused or ill kids or when parents are
moving (many of our families are homeless or migratory). To
get vocational training for the children who are too old to
start grade school. A garden to play in, parent skill
training so parents can teach other parents.
To give these children a chance.