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Background

Children and Poor Community Development Organization (CPCDO) in Battambang (BTT), Cambodia, is a branch funded by the Float Foundation from Holland since January 2007 and started its full operation as of April 20, 2007. With the fund, CPCDO Battambang constructed three buildings: one having four toilets and a small room for generator is to house 50 orphanages (26/boys and 24/girls); another one is for classroom and dining, and a part of it is CPCDO office; and the last one is the out-door kitchen connected to the girls’ building.This annual report is to report the project activities funded by the Float Foundation from 01 January to 31 December 2009.

 

CPCDO Personnel

During the year, the Accountant, Mr. Chheoun Chhon, resigned on November 01, 2009 to continue his study. On December 1, 2009, a woman was employed for the vacant position. However, CPCDO Battambang still has 7 staffs working respectively with the following positions: shelter director, accountant, administrator, teacher, security guard, cook and wet nurse.As usual, a monthly meeting is conducted with a regular agenda discussing on managing children, teaching and educating children on moral and rules living in the CPCDO Battambang, security and order, and hygiene foods and health.

Children Status:

During the reporting period, most of them had worked well at the public schools even though two of them had performed poorly resulting in repeating their grades for the 2008-2009 academic year. In this new academic year, 2009-2010, the preparation was conducted as before such registration for the new admission and purchasing school materials and uniforms. Moreover, CPCDO Battambang came with a new high effort to improve the children education as whole especially those failures through strengthening them in the supplemented classes, “Mathematics and Khmer Literature” at the center under the high attention of their teacher.

The new academic year was started in October and the children have been studying in three state schools (Dob Krosaing Primary School, Prey Touch Secondary School and Sangkae High School) according to their grades. The table below indicated the children classification by grade and school.

School Name Grade Number of children
Dob Krosaing Primary School 2 1
3 4
4 6
5 14
6 6
Prey Touch Secondary School 7 2
8 10
9 6
Sangkae High School 10 1
Total 50

 

In August, a disabled boy, Sothearith, was transferred to Arrupe Organization, another boy was transferred to Phnom Penh shelter due to his performance and two boys were permitted by Children Committee to live in the center.

English Study At the beginning of the year, children were studying “English for Children” and “Essential English Book One,” and started a new book, “New Headway: Elementary” depending on their levels. In April, the study of “English for Children” was completed, and started with the new book, “Let’s Go.” In this English study, not only the 50 children of the center but also those who were from outside the center were attended the class regarding to their capacity levels.In total, there were 86 children at the end of the year studied English, see the below table. The number indicated 8 children increase from the outside compared to the numbers in the beginning year. Most of their performances were good as they could practice listening, reading and writing well while some of them were still poor in those skills. With the regard, the poor would be strengthened and the goods would be encouraged for better and better for the next year.

 

English Book Children in the Center Children from Outside Total
Essential English Book One 12 7 19
Let’s Go 30 5 35
New Headway: Elementary 18 14 32
Total 50 36 86

 

Library

Up to ending December, there are 727 books in library, most of which were provided by Hope of Cambodian Children (HFCC). They were history books, poetry books, joke story books, Mom and Mab books, general knowledge books, folks, magazines, picture books, drawing books, Learning to Cook, bibles, I Want to Know-I Want to Read books, and other information documents. Global Student Outreach provided 2 sets of toys.The library is also opened for children outside the center to read books. Therefore, every Saturday children were encouraged to read and contest in telling the stories. The library was equipped with three new book-shells and 15 new chairs.

Skills Training

At the end of the year, 9 children are able to sculpture well with what they have learnt. 22 children did their drawing and painting very well while 23 children could only do quite well with their drawing. Three of the 8 children who learned to cook could cook 5 dishes while the good cook could do 8 dishes. Compared to the beginning year, there were respectively increase in good sculpturing 5 children, in good drawing and/or painting 30 children, and in cooking 1 children.

Meals

As usual, three meals a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner) were made for children to eat together along with a set monthly menu under a sufficient balance of the meal. Further, there were some more foods from their garden such as rice, bananas, chilies, lemon grasses, spring onions, morning glory, tomatoes, lemons, papayas, and some other vegetables.
Children health and hygiene

During the first quarter, many of the children got fever, headache and sore throat found to be infected from the cool, windy and wet weather period, some had stomach ache, and some other had tooth ache. Passing to the hot season during the second quarter, without knowing and preventing before, typhoid had infected from a few to 30 children in the center, and ringworm started to spread out among the boys while the infections of the above were gradually recovered under the effort of the center’s staff. Again, because of new infection, all children were strengthened to practice hygiene especially body wash and clothes and bed stuffs washing. Further, during the last six months, many girls got lice and other three children again had typhoid while the former diseases decreased to the end.With the experiences, CPCDO Battambang would take high attention on the steps to improve the children health and hygiene.

Children Materials

Besides the above mentioned school materials (notebooks, pens, pencils, rubbers, rulers and colors) and uniforms, all children always received some clothes, peddles, tooth brushes, toothpastes, towels, kormas, etc in each of every year.Rechargeable battery lights were bought lately this year to help children refresh their lessons early morning before going school.

Gardening

Since having the garden, it helped improve children nutrition as they would have more vegetables from the gardening output. During the first six months, cucumbers, cabbages (black one and duck foot one), mangos, parsnip, bananas, and morning glory (trokourn), papayas, jack fruits, guavas were planted. During the last six months, lemons, pumpkins, peppers and rice were further grown. Output of this gardening came from the efforts of every child and CPCDO Battambang’s staff.

Excursion

There were two trips for children during the year: (1) Before Khmer New Year and during school break, April 10, all children and CPCDO’ staff visited a resort in Porsat Province.(2) October 25, 2009 all children and staff visit a resort in Battambong Province

Children Committee

There were three meetings held during the reported year. One was on March 03 to discuss and decide on transferring a disabled boy, Sothearith, to “Arrupe Organization” for his future as he would be well taken care of and get more benefits. With the regard of being more beneficial for him, he was decided to transfer to the center. The 2nd meeting took place on August 12 to discuss and make decision to transfer another boy, Sopheap, to Phnom Penh shelter due to his poor performance while being in the center and approve two boys among five children to replace the two transferred. As a result Nham Vichet (10 years old) and Beach Phearak (12 years old) were approved to be in the center after the decision to transfer Sopheap to Phnom Penh was made. The 3rd meeting was held in December 26, 2009 to review the progress of CPCDO during the year. At the meeting there was a discussion to establish a Community to help children however the detail on this was not yet discussed. Mr. Poeun, Director of Battambong shelter informed the Committee that he was success to contact with a pure drinking water organization to provide the facility to produce pure water. The organization agreed to provide the machine and technical support, however, they could not provide fund to build the workshop in which CPCDO need to find support to build the water workshop.

Other Events/Activities:·

Battambong Shelter Director and Deputy Director of CPCDO were trained on Office Managemeent Skills and Report Writing and Communication Skills.· Three day-training on Children Safety Prevention Policy was conducted by Deputy Director of CPCDO, Mr. Sam Aat, to CPCDO Battambong’s staff on August 8-10, 2009.· Six times in the year,

Hope for Cambodian Children (HFCC) came and provided medical checks, dental care, 2 volley balls and anti-lice shampoos for the children. Further, HFCC also offered 12 boxes of colors, 4 boxes color chalks, 47 toys, and some games for the library.·

Visits of Rustic Pathways company:

The company’s representatives visited the center 4 times during this year giving parties to children and many of the followings: painting the center’s buildings, mirrors candies, instant noodles and other snacks, volley balls, funding for the center’s sign label, medical checks, 2 TVs, laying 3 trucks of gravel, making the garden’s fends, building a 2 room bathroom, iron beds, painting flowers and orange trees, and building a flag pole.·

Visit of Global Student Outreach:

5 times of the year, the organization visited the center and also provided snacks, T-shirts, blankets, plates, buckets, a motorbike-Honda Wave, pumping machine, a toilet, 2 computers, school bags and 1000 litters of gasoline. Further, Mr. Dustin, representative of Global Student Outreach, had discussed in the meeting about share funding in 2010 with the Float Foundation to help the children.·

Visit of the Float Foundation’s Representatives: There were three visits during the year to see how well CPCDO Battambang operated to better the children education and well be in the center. Further, specific visits were made for the decision on transferring 2 children outside the center and the selecting new children. More particularly, the President of the Float Foundation, Mr. Henk van Zijtveld and Dr. Arie Blod together with Mrs. Vireak visited the center to monitor the progress of the project and also met Mr. David, HFCC Director, discussing about the support of HFCC to the children.· On May 18, during the visit of President of the Float Foundation there was a meeting with Mr. Billy, Director of Billy & Jenny Foundation to find a possible collaboration to raise fund for both organizations, Billy & Jenny Foundation and CPDCO.· On February 5-6, a grandma, Noland Vanna and her husband visited and gave the center 14 stories books, 4 English books, 50 pairs of peddles, 8 bicycles, 2 sacks of rice (100 kg), 2000 Riels per child, and a party celebration.

Difficulties:

Even though many difficulties occurred during the year were solved, still a few difficulties are:

  1. The control and prevention of children disease infection.
  2. Lack effective transportation for sending children to hospital in case of emergency.