I was thrilled to learn that some of the adults in the village have approached Chanti asking if we will have Cambodian reading and writing classes for the adults. The vast majority of adults in our village are illiterate. 

I've always wanted to hold adult literacy classes but am always very aware of not pushing my ideals onto the people if its not in line with what they want, or for that matter assuming that I know what's best for them.  

Now that they have shown real interest we will be setting up adult classes in the New Year.

Furthermore, we may also set up kindergarten classes at our community center in the New Year - if the finances stretch that far (wink, wink).

SEEDS

We are continuing with all of our usual work at the village, such as providing bikes, accessing specialist medical care when necessary, helping people set up businesses, etc. 

We are also still supplying seeds, but we’ve changed the way we do it.  Our aim is to promote a culture of self-sufficiency as opposed to having the villagers become reliant on aid.  Accordingly, rather than give away seeds all the time, which doesn’t encourage responsibility, we are now selling seeds in the village.  We buy them in Siem Reap and then sell them at approximately half of the cost price.  This means the villagers can buy a small can of vegetable seeds for as little as 15c and they don’t have to travel all the way into town (25kms) to get them.  You may think it doesn’t seem right selling seeds to the poor people, but I have been absolutely amazed at how much we are selling.  It seems every second day Kim (the lady who sells them on our behalf) phones with a request for more seeds.

This is Kim and Chanti (my right hand man).  Kim has a small stall where she sells some basic grocery items.  She sells the seeds on our behalf and for this we pay her a small wage.

This extremely poor, single parent, family live across from Kim’s stall and never used to have a vegetable garden.  As you can see, they do now!  The seeds used here were bought from Kim.

We are continuing to supply bikes to the villagers with the ultimate aim that eventually we will have provided a bike for every household.  We've provided over 200 bikes so far.  Noosa Rotary club have just generously donated the funds for 100 bikes.  The boy in this picture, who is an orphan, used to be absent from school quite frequently because of the distance he had to walk.  Since he has had a bike he hasn't missed a day of school.  

Phone (in Cambodia):  092 442 669  (outside Cambodia)  855 92 442 669

Email:   grovesphotography@yahoo.com.au

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