Riverkids Project

Quick update from Cambodia and Singapore

2009-11-14T16:38:00.003+08:00

Blum children singing

With the Get Ready for Boys' pilot (funded by CLSA, thank you!) starting in November, and a big reshuffle of rooms as we moved admin and our Bright Girls' co-op to another space, freeing up rooms for more classrooms - well. November has started with a bang!

Thanks to Kaity Wilson and her friends and family, we were able to donate a photocopier to a local primary school that has been amazing for our students and many other poor kids. This means free attendance and better teaching for more than just Riverkids children.

Over in Singapore, Elaine has been wrapped up in grants and campaigns, and I've been catching up on months of backlog. The kindness and generosity of our donors has been amazing, and we hope to bring you more news more often *g*

Our Get Ready for Boys students

My honour to join Riverkids to do Projects & Communications

2009-11-10T17:12:00.002+08:00

It’s now my third week with Riverkids and there is so much I have been exposed to regarding information on child trafficking and the general situation in Cambodia. I come to know of a real-life account on how a young girl from Riverkids escaped from a foreign pedophile and eventually brought him to court.

On one hand, it saddens me to hear such a heart-breaking story of a girl raped on multiple occasions (this is the harsh reality, I told myself). On the other hand, I am relief to learn that a child’s bravery supersedes fear in this case and that saved her life.

Many children in the Cambodian communities we are working with are benefiting from our programmes. I love, in particular, the Get Ready Programmes. It is such a wonderful model that we are implementing in other nearby slums to eventually eliminate child trafficking.

Besides loading myself with a deluge of information, I am planning for a few major campaigns, putting together grants for Riverkids and corresponding with our donors. It allows me to leverage on my past work experience in business development, marketing communications and of course, my love for kids!

Next month will be another exciting month, I will come face to face with the people we are serving in the slums. Besides interacting with them, I shall be capturing many precious moments on my digital camera.

I will get to meet our colleagues there and I think the first thing I want to do when I meet them is to commend them for the relentless and conscientious effort that they have been putting in to give their very best to the people in need.

I will also get to meet other NGOs and am looking forward to learn as much as I can from them. I shall return to the blog to provide more exciting news!

Crunching the numbers! Our September 2009 report

2009-10-28T18:50:00.000+08:00

Monthly Report in September 2009
46 pages, 950kb. Covers all our Cambodia programs in Phnom Penh for September 2009.

Highlights!

226 children had extra nutrition through healthy snacks and drinks during programmes
115 students were promoted a grade this school year
75 children at Steven House afterschool tuition, several absent from family problems
64 new students registered for the 2009/2010 school year at four Phnom Penh state schools
60 families were visited and counselled this month
57 children at Blum House for afterschool tuition, several absent from family problems and truancy
50 children in our choir, 66 in traditional dancing and 74 for breakdancing!
47 children in the Riverkids football teams
45 families had health counselling and checks
45 children in kindergarten, two absent (measles and truancy)
34 children in English classes, some absent from truancy or difficult schedules
34 children and families received the Food Box weekly support
30 women were employed making paper handcrafts for sale
25 students have to repeat the year, usually because of family problems and truancy
25 new grade school students with parents in sex work were interviewed and selected for our pilot Railway site
18 children were safe in our Weekly Boarding program
17 children required medical attention
15 girls in the Get Ready programme, one withdrawn for family problems
15 women joined a short embroidery contract job
13 children selected for places in our kindergarten
12 girls graduated in September, 7 returning to school, 3 to our Bright Girls co-op, and 2 for apprenticeships
10 pregnant women had prenatal care
9 mothers and 6 children had private counselling for serious family issues
7 children were fostered in the community with our support
6 malnourished babies and toddlers had extra nutrition under the Baby Bellies program
6 girls took part in the Bright Girls sewing co-op
4 youths represented Cambodia (and Riverkids) overseas in Italy for football
3 international volunteers taught English
2 rooms were repainted by volunteers from Singapore and the Get Ready girls
2 advocacy tours visited Riverkids
2 children were left motherless after a traffic accident, with the youngest entering our fostercare temporarily.
1 child entered fostercare due to domestic violence
0 child trafficking incidents!

Challenges:

Kindergarten teachers have extra responsibilities and need more help
English classroom is small and crowded
Blum was flooded during the rains and needed repairs
Lots and lots of work!
Getting uniforms and school shoes and sharing supplies around
Microloan programme that fits the high-risk urban community is needed
A more private and safe space for counselling is needed
Families skip appointments or refuse to take part in training and counselling
Kids in foster care and weekly boarding need extra guidance
We need internal receipts for expenses that won't issue receipts like street vendors
The Bright Girls need two new sewing machines and training in business as they expand

Local Donor With Riverkids

2009-10-26T12:57:00.007+08:00

Last September, one Khmer generous donor came to visit Riverkids with a large donation include medicine, rice, shampoos powder, milk, food for the kids by Riverkids.

In addition, she invited Riverkids staffs and 25 kids to participant in her daughter birthday with the purpose to provide opportunity for the kids to enjoy together with delicious food and happy party with her daughter.

We at Riverkids are very happy when we see the local people involve in charitable work. So now Riverkids can help over 350 kids to get education at 12 state school around Phnom Penh.

More Jobs for Women at Riverkids

2009-10-24T12:21:00.005+08:00

Recently the mothers at Riverkids are so busy. They work on a kind of craft such as paper jewelry, which have been ordered by generous customer from Canada.

The women are so happy. In stead of going collect cans on the streets and at conner of markets in Phnom Penh, they can stay at home and make crafts, and they get income better than collecting cans.

Riverkids staff who in charge of micro-business has been so delighted and wrote to the customer

" On behalf of Riverkids Foundation, cambodia. We are staff members, vulnerable

children and vulnerable families especially the mothers and Get Ready Girls who participate in making hand crafts would like to say thank you very much for your generious order the huge units products from Riverkids, cambodia.

Moreover,through the demand of your order the women and vulnerable girls can earn the income to support daily food for their family.

Once again, we would like to thanks you. We strongly believe you will continue to keep order hand crafts from Roiverkids Foundation, Cambodia in the future.

Wish you all the best, good health, and successful in your work and life".

A Busy Time At Riverkids

2009-10-22T17:48:00.014+08:00

In the new academic year (2009-2010), Riverkids will sponsor over 350 kids attending State school. This is a substantial increase in students from last year, due to over 50 new kids enrolled at the beginning of New Academic Year.

As a result, we at Riverkids are quite busy: we need to organize over 350 individual packages of school supplies and uniforms for the kids. There are always limited resources but each group of kids receives some supplies, with the numbers of books, pens and other supplies they get from Riverkids depending on their school grade - for example, if they attend higher Grade classes, they will receive more supplies.

Our educational staff and social workers also monitor the new starters for a few weeks to ensure the kids are attending their classes.

The first time at State School

We are pleased to announce that we have enrolled 35 students from the Riverkids Kindergarten class into their first classes at State school. Disappointingly, although we had a meeting to encourage parents to become more proactive with their children’s education, only few parents enrolled their children. Therefore, the first day at the state school, most of the kids will be sponsored and assisted by Riverkids staff, who will gather the young students and walk with them to their new school.

The kids at RailWay-II

Sister Dale Edmonds and an Advocacy group visited the home of sex workers recently. They were touched by the stories and everyday lives of the sex worker’s children: they don’t have an opportunity to go to school because, as well as financial difficulties, the school is quite far from home.

Sister Dale Edmonds decided to support 25 kids from the RailWay area to enroll at the State school as their first steps towards receiving an education. Each child received a package of school supplies, a school bag, and a school uniform. They are also given around 0.25 USD to buy snacks when they go school every day. A prearranged tuk tuk comes to pick them up, take them to school and return them home.

All the Riverkids staff, the kids and their parents would like to say thank you to Sister Dale Edmonds and all our generous donors who always support vulnerable kids in Cambodian. With assistance like this, we can assist more children to gain an education and give them the chance to improve their own future.

Graduation of Get Ready Girls

2009-10-21T16:40:00.005+08:00

After six months of training at Riverkids, the Get Ready Girls have successfully graduated.

Sister Dale Edmonds, the President of Riverkids, spoke on behalf of all donors and volunteers and expressed her happiness that all the girls were graduating with higher self-esteem, a love of learning and a desire to continue studying at school or do further vocational training with Riverkids or another NGO.

At the graduation ceremony, each of the girls received a certificate to mark their achievement, noting they had completed the Riverkids Get Ready Girls training course. Riverkids were also pleased to award an Honorary Certificate of Appreciation to Madam Lynette Joy Edmonds, in memory of Roger Edmonds and in recognition of the extremely generous support they have provided to the vulnerable children to the Riverkids Foundation from the very beginning.

We also awarded certificates of appreciation to our local Riverkids staff and volunteers, who dedicate their time and energy to looking after, educating and assisting the children and their community at Riverkids.

Thank you to all our generous supporters!

One More Contribution for Riverkids

2009-10-20T15:43:00.006+08:00

Riverkids recently received support from Oxfam (Quebec) to develop a cartoon film called “FAMILY VALUES”, aimed at making children and parents aware of the value of family and education.

The cartoon hopes to address situations like those of the Riverkids community, where parents will often send their children into busy streets on their own to collect cans – a story reflected in the film.

It has been broadcast on local television channels since the beginning of October, 2009 and will run until February 2010.

Riverkids has also co-operated with another NGO, Pha Ponlue Seilbak, to develop a cartoon book to accompany the film. We aim to distribute the book for free to other NGOs and public schools around Cambodia, aiming for the largest possible exposure to the story.

We believe that cartoon films and books such as these, which outline initiatives like our child trafficking prevention project, are more accessible to the community. We also hope that they will help encourage more families and local communities to look after vulnerable children.

On behalf of the Riverkids Foundation, I would like to thank Oxfam (Quebec) and the Canadian people, who provided their own money to help fund our child trafficking prevention mission in Cambodia.

Some notes from Riverkids Community Nurse

2009-10-16T18:28:00.009+08:00

When the first Advocacy group visited the Railway group, home of a number of sex workers, we met a two year-old boy HL. He had problems with his testicles (Estrangement Erniaire) and our visitors felt sorry for him - he was in severe pain but his mother was unable to send him to the hospital. Luckily, our visitors promised to pay for his surgery.

On October 16 2009, with the assistance of the Riverkids community nurse, HL was sent to receive surgery at Khien Khlang, one of the charity clinics in Cambodia. He is currently under recovery from the surgery.

We at Riverkids and the mother of the boy want to thank you so much for the generous support. With your help, we are able to assist more vulnerable kids in Cambodia.

In another case at the Railway group, the community nurse of Riverkids met a lady who works as sex worker. She is currently 8 months pregnant. She’s never gone to a medical check up and her body is swollen.

The community nurse provided some advice relating to pre and post maternity care, and assisted her with taking a simple blood test. She doesn’t have much money and now that the birth is due any day, we at Riverkids are looking for generous donors to support her during maternity leave.

The homeless sex worker

SN is 27 year old. She works as sex worker and a beer girl. She has a one month old-daughter. Her husband is drug addicted and sometimes beats her. The first time we met her, we felt incredibly sorry for her and touched - she had black eyes and couldn’t see clearly due to the swelling.

She does not enough money to rent a room. She live underneath a neighbor‘s house which is full of sewage and very bad smells. Riverkids have provided some toiletries such as baby clothes, sarong, soap toothpaste and toothbrush etc. but as always are looking for further help to assist people like her.

Quick Singapore update!

2009-10-02T10:22:00.002+08:00

Holly screend last night as part of a local film festival, and I took part in a discussion afterwards for Riverkids with Sallie, a Singapore-based academic, and Katrina, a UNIFEM volunteer.

I couldn't watch the film as a movie, because I was too fascinated by their accuracy. There are some quibbles - a line about adoptions as a cover for human trafficking, when it was baby buying and laundering, Holly's lack of basic Khmer - but they did a lot of background research and it shows.

Thuy Nguyen who plays Holly is wonderful to watch, because she reminds me of some of my favourite kids in the Riverkids program (I know, we're not supposed to have favourites, but there are some kids who just stand out in memory!), the street-smart and defiant ones. They're hard to reach, but once you get through to them, they'll do more than survive, they'll flourish.

Well worth buying the DVD (Amazon). It was rated M18 here in Singapore, but I'd be comfortable with a smart teenager watching as there's no on-screen sex, only implications.

We're super busy getting new shop items tagged, photographed and added to the shop, and updating the website, plus a long to-do list from the Cambodia team, but the great news is that Riverkids has received some excellent applications for the Project Manager post.

Fingers crossed, we'll have a post this October welcoming the new member of our team.

Snapshots from the September 21-23 advocacy trip

2009-09-29T13:06:00.008+08:00

A brothel worker rubs my shoulders inexpertly as a cover for our interview in the grubby room. There are brightly-coloured posters of houses and gardens plastered to the walls, and a sheet hung up as a curtain over a window. It's not her room - they haven't got places of their own, she explains, they just sleep where they can, because they are always working. Where does she keep her things, I ask. In a plastic bag under one of the other beds, she says. She's the only single woman working there. The other six women have children, husbands or boyfriends. She keeps 30% of her fee, just over $2 for sex. I slip her $5, our interview rate, out of sight of the brothel owner.
At the Vietnamese slum, it was like stepping back eight years to the first slum Riverkids worked in, now demolished: kids running around, laughing and playing, and then suddenly the girls at 11,12 onwards are gone. 25 teenage boys, they reckoned for this community. Seven girls, all working "at night". The rest are gone.
Little girl, 2-3 years old, scowling at me when I tried to make her smile, then turning and running after the other children, laughing. Sold for $50 to another family, then dumped when she turned out HIV positive.
A beautiful teal-blue strapless dress with a short bubble skirt and intricate ruching, the singer shyly admitting that she wasn't sure quite how many dresses she had and then more confidently, about her plans to pay for a tailoring course so she can quit the beer garden. She lost her job as a receptionist when the company closed, but this, she said firmly, is not her future.
A small boy with probable cerebral palsy stays with his relatives in the slum. He's thin and cries out to the Riverkids nurse for milk. After several interviews, what seemed to be neglect turns out to be a family struggling to do the best, turned away by doctors, trying to find food he can manage and a pair of doting cousins carrying him around. We're helping with leg braces, liquid nutritional supplements and physiotherapy. He holds on tight to the little toy car he's been given, then waves it at his cousin with delight.
Lunch with a young woman from a tiny village in one of the poorest provinces, hoping to start university. She wants to be an architect. Her mother kept her and her sister in school even though they had to go without anything else because her father, who died in 2003, made her promise that the girls would stay in school too, believing that his daughters deserved the same education as his sons. She's tall for a village girl, tall and loved and volunteering at the local temple, teaching english and so earnest.
Stepping carefully across the flooded floor of the one-room to sit on the single bed and talk by a dim fluorescent light to a heavily pregnant thin lady, and watching her eyes flick past us to check on her little girl playing behind us, then to the door where her husband waited patiently for us to finish. A love story - they married young and her husband and her were trying their hardest, but she'd had to quit her job at the garment factory when the fumes made her painfully ill this pregnancy. Her daughter's hair is streaked from malnutrition.
"I had an abortion yesterday," she said when we are asking the three sex workers we were visiting about contraception. She touched her abdomen gently and then explained that it wasn't the herbs or medicine, but that she was lucky, an NGO (one I know that does good work) helped her get to the hospital for a D&C. "Why the hospital?" I asked. Because she started bleeding after the police beat her when they had arrested her for prostitution. And she has HIV.
The police will take your money, they said. All you earn that night, then your jewelry if you have any. Sometimes they are polite and they pay for the sex. But sometimes they don't.
"What about this girl?" one of the women said later, when we were all standing in a group around the railway, saying goodbye to the women who had talked with us. She pointed to a girl with her hair tucked up, leaning against a woman in her forties in pyjamas. "Has she been to school before? Is she working? What about her family?" A little bit - she can write her name, no, only collecting garbage, just her mother as a sex worker and she has, you know, problems, mental problems. Not the girl, they assured us. She's a good girl. Can we help her?

The staff talked quickly. Thursday, our fourth group of Get Ready girls graduate, and the fifth group starts. We have two places left. If her mother brings her, if the girl wants to -yes. And the food box, so she can study fulltime, yes. Be there on Thursday, we tell her. You can do this, give your daughter a chance.

And she does come, with her hair clipped back neatly, clean shoes and incredible shyness, to watch 13 girls graduate from the Get Ready program (six back to school, seven to vocational training), and to meet the rest of her new class.
The Vietnamese-style coffee at the tourist sex bar is very good. I drink, with a headache from awful taiwanese beer I bought at the beer garden earlier when we talked to the singer, while the tour talks to another bar girl. Her story is practiced, a sob story. She needs money, she has a sick child - there's something off about it, or maybe it's just that the women here are even more artificial. The men want to pretend that they're carefree asian girls, that they sleep with strangers because they genuinely like them, that they enjoy sex for cash. Their english is good, but after the beer garden, where the women relax out of sight of the customers, where they sing for pleasure as well as pay, where it's Khmer, not a bad copy of a Phuket bar, they look exhausted and harsh.
The Vietnamese-style coffee at the "coffeeshop" is terrible. Plastic loungers lined up to face two televisions. All men, drinking a bit, talking. We go in and conversation falters then starts again. My staff - Soklee! - talks to the man sitting near us. He's a boxer, he comes here in the mornings to relax. They work in the markets, as motodrivers, it's just a friendly place to drink. We look at the upstairs balcony, shut off almost entirely with wooden panels, at the group of young waitresses bringing the men drinks. Soklee goes to pay the bill, and to ask questions away from the foreigners.

The owner, a woman, says oh yes, they're all cousins that she helps with good jobs waitressing in her shop. Free room and board. She doesn't know about if they go with customers or not, she tells them not to, but sometimes they don't listen. She pays them $50 a month too. Where do they come from? The countryside, when she visits her home province, the mothers, they ask her to help find them jobs. The waitresses are dressed in nice clothes, with small jewelry, handphones. She claims they make less than the woman, standing barefoot in her flooded slum room, ever did at her 12-hour 7-day garment factory job did. None of them look related. The men look away, embarrassed.
But it's like a pub in a developed country, isn't it? There are sex workers everywhere. But choice - when you choose to become a sex worker, when you could change to a job that paid as much, that had the same hours so you could take care of your children and feed them, rather than hoping you might have family, a husband (gone, they say, over and over, gone. Another woman, to work somewhere, he beat me, he ran away, he died maybe. Gone.) A husband, a father means the difference between your children surviving or selling yourself to strangers - and someone asks me, puzzled, why do the women want children with their husbands? why do they let their husbands beat them, be so cruel? Because here, a bad husband is still so much better than no husband, than despair.
We look at fat babies, nursed and talk about breastfeeding and slings, and why Cambodian women don't scream when they give birth. Some do, the women say at last, our nurse included, but the doctors and nurses don't like it usually. They will tell you to be quiet or the baby dies. And you scream, one of the mothers says, what's the point? It still hurts the same.

I try to explain the Khmer code for women, that to be quiet, to never react to pain, is the ideal. I wonder why the code for men is not as widely known.
We change at the last minute to visit a different school. We're annoyed with the school where most of our children go, the one that's physically closest. The bathrooms have been broken for a long time, and the director admitted that they had the funds to repair it, but they had kept it instead. We offered to repair the bathrooms in exchange for a discount on the unofficial daily school fees for our children, but they'd rather collect more bribes. The school is slowly falling apart, and the last time I saw the senior staff, I counted the number of gold rings on their hands.
We visit a school where 24 of our children, older ones that can cross the busy streets between it and their slum home, go for free. The headmaster waived the fees for NGOs, charges a fixed daily fee for the others - I walk in the gate and stop. Painted signs, neatly tended gardens, children running around and playing, but not hitting or screaming. Teachers walking through with children asking them questions, not ducking away. I look into a classroom and gasp - posters, homemade artwork, good schoolwork hung up on display - it's beautiful, so beautiful.

The headmaster, I'm asked - is he rich? He looks rich. I'm puzzled, and then I realise what they mean - he has one ring, a clean pressed shirt, and tidy dark pants. Look at his shoes, I whisper. Sophon had shoes like that once, still does. His shoes are cracked at the side, worn out from use. The shirt is pressed by his wife, his ring modest by local standards.

I ask who paid for all the improvements, the little fence around the garden for the pet rabbits, the paving stones so the children can play in wet weather, the playground equipment - parents, he says proudly. They saw that we tried to work hard, that we are doing better, and then they give a little, some more. Later, we are talking about a donation from us so we can enroll more students, and he says can the school top up the donation so they can get better quality equipment? I feel like I should pinch myself. Does this school really exist?
"She's just like a limp pillow," he said. A man complaining to the parents of a 14-year old girl he'd bought in Cambodia that she wasn't affectionate enough in sex.

Three days in Phnom Penh: Karly Franz

2009-09-18T23:44:00.009+08:00

Day 1
The first day I was a bit nervous because I didn’t know what to expect or what I would encounter. I had many questions- would the community accept me? Would I really be able to help? I am 17 years old and a high school student volunteering at Riverkids for the first time.

I am considering the medical field for study after graduation so I was keen on working with the nurse to see if this would be a path for me to explore. After arriving by tuk-tuk, I first saw the smiling face of Soklee, one of the Volunteer Coordinators at Riverkids. She welcomed us and spent time explaining more about Riverkids Project and her involvement with the organization. She gave me a tour of the classrooms and I had the opportunity to observe the kids during lessons. My immediate impression was how intelligent the kids were. They were reciting their ABC’s like professionals and could imitate exactly what the English teacher said after hearing the sentence once! Later I was introduced to the director, Sophon, who went over the mission of Riverkids Project and reviewed our agenda for the next few days. I started to relax as I saw that it would be easy to integrate into this ‘family’ right away.

Around mid-morning, I accompanied the nurse during her visit in which she checked up on newborn babies and pregnant women in the neighborhood. The nurse had a patient approach and seemed well accepted by the community. I was warmed by the smiles and gentle gestures of greeting offered upon entering each house. To go through the community, we had to maneuver narrow corridors and even narrower walking planks through which I could see the strewn garbage from many crowded households. Some families had four walls to enclose their living space but others only had two; they were exposed to the elements year round. This gave me a perspective into the families’ lives and I began to appreciate the Riverkids mission even more as I saw the impact through their work.

I was impressed that these nurse visits were a free service offered to the community. The nurse presented valuable information in the form of picture cards that showed indications of an emergency such as premature contractions or preeclampsia. The picture cards also demonstrated procedures in caring for a new born. I was told that the women did not go to the hospital to give birth so this is the only information they had to alert them to the signs of impending complications.

In the afternoon, I visited the Blum site where I aided the nurse in a demonstration to the children on hand washing (which was being taught so the children would not contract H1N1) in preventing contagion. Once again I noticed how sharp these kids were, picking up the vocabulary associated with proper hygiene. Incredible memory!

Day 2
The day commenced early and my first task was to assist the nurse with a nutritional program. The kids were so cute and sweet and eagerly took in all that we taught them on health and nutrition (which consisted of the basic food groups). I was impressed with the way that the staff was always on their toes when teaching the children and coming up with creative approaches to maintain the kids’ attention and interest. I truly saw how the children enjoyed the class because the staff was able to make learning fun. There was a lot of information to retain and, even though the kids didn’t take notes, they remembered the important points presented.

Day 3

Today we arrived early for the excursion to the water park. The air was charged with excitement. Around 40 of us piled into the tuk-tuks with Soklee coordinating the procedure by assigning older kids to the younger ones. There was a range in ages from 7-17 and all had fun. Even with the language barrier were able to communicate and laugh over the silliest things at the water park. Everyone was so open and I felt a kinship with the other teenaged girls, being a teen myself. We swam, splashed, went down the water slide dozens of times, laughed and overall had an amazing time. At the end of the day when we returned to Riverkids, we felt exhausted, yet euphoric. Saying goodbye to everyone was especially difficult as they were all truly wonderful people to meet. I wish I could have stayed longer and I hope to return again.  This short trip taught me that we all have something to offer and that we each have a responsibility to each other. The staff taught me the importance of working together in improving the lives of the kids and their families. The kids taught me that everyone deserves to be accepted and given the chance to learn and improve oneself. 

Riverkids is hiring in Singapore!

2009-09-10T12:35:00.002+08:00

Title: Project manager

Looking for someone in Singapore insanely organized and competent, who loves children.

You must have a polytechnic or university degree, and at least 2 years of experience and abilities in at least three of these fields:
1. Technical documentation
2. Book-keeping and accounting
3. Marketing and public relations
4. Research
5. Grantwriting
6. Fundraising and sales
7. Small team management
8. Website and Web 2.0 development

Fluency in written and spoken English is a must. Spoken and/or written Khmer or Vietnamese is a strong plus.

Riverkids is a small non-profit in Singapore and Cambodia that works with over high-risk children to prevent child trafficking. We are highly effective, and this is a chance to make a huge difference directly to the lives of children in Cambodia.

Our Singapore office is very small, overseeing more than 30 staff in Cambodia. The scope of work is very diverse and satisfying. One day you could be researching HIV treatments, the next could be shop merchandising. You will be trained to take over several on-going projects and to assist in creating and developing new projects.

• Salary: SGD$3,000 a month
• Based in Singapore, but regular travel to Cambodia will be required.
• Working hours are 9am to 6pm, five days a week.
• Overtime may be required. Flexible hours can be arranged.
• Our office is in Alexandra Village, near Alexandra Hospital
• Applicants should be Singapore citizens or hold relevant residence status

Please email your resume, references and a short email on why you would like to work for Riverkids to: Dale Edmonds at dale@riverkidsproject.org

St. Aldate's Oxford Volunteers at Riverkids

2009-08-26T14:41:00.005+08:00

It has been another miraculous day in the cozy house of Riverkids Project. The children’s capacity to get skilled in a very short time is one of the human expressions closest to those events called miracles. And it has happened again. It has been about ten days since a group of four volunteers from Oxford stepped into the Riverkids Project community: Mark Rye, a teacher of photography, his wife Jenny, a nurse, Rachel Whitney, a social worker , and Anna Hayward, a teacher of music.

Thanks to the amazing job done by Mark and Rachel, who were able to provided the children with photography and chorus skills by means of warmth and enthusiasm, those present have enjoyed an outstanding performance of singing and a remarkable exhibition of pictures.

However, it’s not been just due to Mark and Anna. The whole Riverkids staffs have worked hard in order to develop the children attitude to different arts subjects. Indeed, the morning schedule began with the exemplary break dance executed by boys: time by time each of them tookthe center of the stage and performed a breathtaking series of leaps, bounces, somersaults, handstands and twists.

If you think it was a great moment, you are right, but it was only the appetizer. If you had attended to the rehearsals, you couldn’t have waited for the girls’ performance directed by Anna.

The girls, all white dressed, placed themselves throughout the stage and sang some hits such as “The lion sleeps tonight”, “Sunshine in my heart”, and “Jingle Bells”. When voices of many children join together to sing a song and become and unique voice is always an overwhelming experience, but it happens often that they get too excited and end up to lose the track. It has never happened today: the girls have danced and sung in tune with music played by the band.

After a deserved break enriched by delicious food, it was the time to be delighted by the beautiful pictures taken by Mark’s class. Almost thirty portraits hung on a thread depicted Riverkids’ children and staff: some of them could be exposed in a museum thanks to their color intensity, their accurate frame and their capacity to communicate characters’ feelings.

Afterwards, the schedule was completed by new performances of break dance and choruses. Unfortunately, it was the last act before joining altogether on the stage and then leaving with the heart fulfilled with emotions. AlessandroRizzi

Seven days to Phnom Penh

2009-08-26T11:23:00.001+08:00

I'm heading back up in a week for the first September advocacy trip! We're almost completely booked out, so if you're thinking about it, email me now. The dates are September 3-5 and September 21-23rd.

My two boys are heading up for part of the trip, and they're both excited and very nervous. One has packed his fishing rod for the Ton Le Sap!

We're expecting some funding to hire a full-time person for Riverkids in Singapore, fantastic news.

"There is trafficking cases in the (village). (Client), she is 17 years old work at Karaoke shop in Phnom Penh receive salary $50 per month. Lated one of her friends asks to find a job near Thai boarder. In fact, her friend has sold her to prostitution house. The police work together with authority to liberate and send her to World hope organization. World hope comes to cooperate with Riverkids to help her family especially two of her brother and sister to support them to go to school.

Solution
Riverkids agree to support both of her brother and sister to assist them to go to school for new academic year by assigned social worker work directly with her family to get further information."

Other highlights from this month's report:

One staff member on maternity leave - more babies!
A bunch of kindergarten children dropped out and were brought into weekly boarding for safety
Our breakdancing class needs to be expanded because a bunch of the footballers have joined up!
More shop orders from two micro-funded businesses some of our families are involved in.
We helped arrange an emergency C-section - the baby is still in hospital, but recovering.

Riverkids Attend Homeless World Cup in Italy

2009-08-22T10:10:00.006+08:00

On August 15-16, 2009 a very popular English newspaper, The Cambodia Daily issued one article about the kids from Cambodia attend the Homeless World Cup in September.

Please read the whole article as the following:

Homeless Footballers Travel to Italy for International Tourney

By TIM STURROCK THE CAMBODIA DAILY
Six Cambodian footballers will travel to the world fashion capital Milan, Italy, next month to compete in the Homeless World Cup, the organization helping the load players, who all hail from very poor backgrounds, said on Friday. Five hundred players from 48 countries will - during the second week of September in the 7th annual tourney. The event brings homeless young people from around the world together to play each other in street-style matches. Cambodian team members were selected from the NGO Riverkids, which works with impoverished kids, and from the Center for Children's Happiness, which helps orphans and children whose parents cannot care for them.

"It's very fantastic for them to have the chance to go to Italy and see what they can do," Pheakdey Khin, a site manager for Riverkids, said Friday by telephone. Two 17-year-olds and two 18 years-olds from Riverkids will participate this year, she said
Until they began receiving aid from Riverkids two years ago the teens weren't in school and were collecting cans on the street with little supervision, she said.
''If you don't help them they will go and take drugs," she said. The young men stay in the slum area near the Japanese Friendship Bridge. She said that hopefully after visiting Italy they will see a wider range of possibilities as the two young men did last year when they participated in the last Homeless World Cup in Melbourne Australia. ''After they came back, they were so proud of themselves," she said "It has changed their lives. They are stronger than before," she said, adding that the two became leaders’ and role models for other children.

Happy Football Cambodia Australia, the organization that is helping get the players to Milan, and which funned in 2005, picked this t year's squad on April 25, the organization said. Three support staff will travel with the six players, said Paraic Grogan, the HFCA chairperson. ''While it may be their only opportunity to visit another country, I hope it will inspire them to do t greater things with their lives," Mr. Grogan.

One More Step Forwards, Riverkids

2009-08-21T17:02:00.013+08:00

Riverkids runs over 12 different programs to assist children and families at risk for trafficking in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

For over two years since February, 2007, we have supported over 300 children to get education under support by Riverkids.

Under support and consel of Sister Dale Edmond, the President of Riverkids based in Singapore, we get more donors support Riverkids and more volunteers from diferrent countries to work directly with the kids at Riverkids.

When we started Riverkids, we wanted to prevent child trafficking by providing education to vulnerable children and provide opportunity for them to have chance to learn, to challenge their skills and enjoy childhood. Now we have stepped forwards one more step. Riverkids will contribute the peaceful culture to their community and others.

Recently,under support from ST. Aldole's Oxford Volunteers, we organized a concert performed by the boys and girls at Riverkids. They can dance Khmer Royal dancing, break dancing, choir songs of English, Frence and Khmer.

It was very supprising that the girls and boys at Riverkids can perform different dance and songs from different countries. It is a kind of peaceful culture. We can combine different culture together and every one can enjoy. It should be encouraged and supported.

We wish all people can live, work together in peace.

Traditional dance class

2009-08-17T17:57:00.001+08:00

Traditional dance class, originally uploaded by riverkidsproject.

Traditional dance is still incredibly popular in Cambodia, and I love how we got this class going.

It was partly a compromise to get a breakdancing class that attracts the 'rougher' kids, to have this as well. Then the teacher and musicians, from a private local business, when they learnt about our project, offered a lower rate. The girls in the class include Vietnamese girls born and raised in Cambodia. One of our boys ended up learning how to play the traditional drums after hanging out around the musicians and has - for a super shy kid - more confidence now. The dresses they're wearing were sewn by our older Get Ready graduates who run a small business on our site. The class is funded by a grant from ArtAction who really get what these extras can mean to our kids.

Dance isn't the same as food or medicine. But when you're working with traumatized children, when trafficking=poverty+despair, dance and art are powerful weapons.

July 2009 Report

2009-08-07T11:51:00.001+08:00

These will be posted out of order, but here’s the very latest! The Cambodia team has been working on making these reports more detailed and structured.

July 2009 was a busy regular month - lots of volunteers, and programs in full-swing. Most programs are going really well, but we’re over stretched in two key areas: after-school tuition, and our social workers’ home visits. We’ve prioritised visiting struggling families, but our aim is to visit all of them. We also don’t have the capacity to offer after-school tuition to all our students, or in some cases, the social workers haven’t been able to get them to attend.

We are able to expand our school program, but we’re going to have to think hard about different ways to reach out to families and kids, while we try to recruit more social workers.

But the best statistic for the month? No child trafficking incidents.

July 2009 Cambodia report, 14.4 MB PDF, 29 pages.

Six Boys Join The National Youth U14

2009-08-06T17:58:00.003+08:00

Riverkids Foundation has created the foot ball group for children are living at a poor community in Phnom Penh. Recently we have created two groups, one is 15 down years old(22 students) and other one is 16 up years old (12 students). Most of their families are can collectors to support their living. After school, they go to collect cans to support family and studying. Fortunately, six boys have been collected by National Youth U14 to participate to the football training of the National Youth U14 team for 2009 through HFCA. Among six players will go to attend the football match in Thailand on October, 2009.

According to Mr. Sokha In, HFCA’s coach (He comes from the Football Federation of Cambodia, FFC) and Mr. Savong, coach of the National Youth U14 about the National Youth U14 team for year 2009 said that “The qualified and the best players at the Cambodia National Youth U14 will be selecting for an international friendly match competition in Philippine next year. The qualified and the best players at U14 will be selecting for U15, U16, and the Cambodia National Team in the future”.

Mr. TESHIMA ATSUSHI, who’s Japan’s soccer coach, soccer consultant and recently as a National Youth Director at Football Federation of Cambodia, FFC came to visit our training last Saturday 18th July 2009 then he gave some good ideas to me and also a coach, for example: have to divide the player by age and coaching them following by the right coaching skill. The games will make for a small team like five/six Vs five/six games is better then a big team, if we do the eight/eleven Vs eight/eleven games, some players will not have an opportunity to get/touch the ball but the small game every players get/touch the ball, so they can improve their skill for day to day by playing the games.

On behalf of Riverkids and the kids, I would like to say thank to our generous supporters who has been working hard to involve in helping to the Cambodian homeless/street children and youths, especially to the donors, sponsorships that have been helping this program since started until now.

Written by Phat Sam Ann
Social Worker at Riverkids Foundation
Email: samann_psy2008@yahoo.com
Mobile: (855-12) 796 407

Our Donor Visited Riverkids

2009-08-05T12:27:00.007+08:00

Ms. Teena Ingram and other four visitors visited Riverkids on July 17, 2009. Ms. Teena is a Founder of Blum Project. Her Family and friends support 50 vulnerable children from Riverkids Community along the railway in Phnom Penh to get opportunity for education and better care.

Teena and the visitors were so pleased when they saw the children were studying happily under support from Riverkids. According to her plan, she would like to sponsor other 50 Cambodian kids. So totally the numbers of children are under support from Blum Project will increase up to 100 children.

Riverkids warmly welcomes all donors for charitable donation to provide children with education, and a safe, alternative place to play, grow and learn so that they can grow up and live fulfilling, free of the devastation known to those children who are trafficked.

Your help is very important to our success. With your help, we can enroll more kids, hire teachers. We can fund health care to children and pregnant mothers.

I hope all of you will kindly support Riverkids. Your generosity can help us sustain our mission for the present and future generations of Cambodian kids.

Another group of Korean Volunteers at Riverkids

2009-07-29T12:29:00.010+08:00

On July 25, 2009 a popular local newspaper issued one article about Korean students volunteered at Riverkids. We translated the article from Khmer into English as the following:

Phnom Penh: On 17-22/July/2009, a group of 18 Korean students from Republic of Korea led by COPION organization helped the children at Riverkids Foundation and the children at Phsa-touch village. Their charitable work included cleaning environment, planting, painting the wall, cooking food and providing school supplies and conducting some kinds of recreational activities with the children.

Miss. Sery Kim, The manager of COPION Organization from Korea said that the purposes of the Korean students came here to help Cambodian children, especially the children who live at the poor communities. She also said that, the children from Republic of Korea live at good condition but when they saw the children who live at difficult situation at this community, some of students go to school without shoes, dirty clothes, the Korean students felt shocked and very pity those children. When they saw these situations, they will try to find any ways to help Cambodian children more than this.

Mr. Phy Sophon, the Executive Director of Riverkids Foundation said that the activities of the volunteers showed about their compassion to Cambodian children who live at the poor communities. He added that before those children had no opportunity to go to school and neglected from the parents and communities. Now under support by Riverkids, they are able to go to school and get enough food. They have a chance to involve in re-creational activities such as sports, choir songs, break dancing, traditional dancing, studying English, computer etc. The lives of those children really have been improved from now.

Miss, Oh Su Jin, the team leader of volunteers said “we are so pleased to have a chance to work and play with these children. She continued that “Cambodian children and Korean students are the same. we are Asian people, we have the same feeling and like the same family, so we should help each other. She added that “when we return to Korea, we will create a website to describe about the difficulty situation of Cambodian children in communities for Korean people and the world to know about those. We will organize other events to collect donation to help more Cambodian children.

Translated by Mr. Som Ann

Drawing Picture Competition Ceremony

2009-07-27T15:08:00.002+08:00

Phnom Penh: A drawing picture competition ceremony was held up by Hosea Ministry in order to encourage children who are neglected, homeless and victims of violence and drug addicted to participate in this significant art activity. The pictures had to be about "domestic violence" or "drug impact and addiction". There were many children from different organizations in Cambodia attending the program.

Meanwhile, Riverkids Foundation was one of the local NGOs that were allowed to have its children for the competition. Riverkids' 10 children were selected to join in this drawing activity having their 10 drawn-out pictures. As the result, one of them, Pil Soksan had the best picture for the 3rd top rank. He was awarded for his nice picture which was about drug addiction and its impact to his community.

"I am so proud of the children here, in the ceremony," said Mr. David, Director of Hosea Ministry. "This participation shows that the slum children really can do like other children, and we strongly support them with our best to get on involved and improve their self-esteems."

Pil Soksan murmured, "I am... erm...very...happy to get the prize. I just drew it for fun". All of the best selected pictures maintained as documents by Hosea Ministry and then they would be printed as picture profile for children in Hosea's library.

Written by Mr. Rithy

Forced Evictions

2009-07-18T11:46:00.004+08:00

Amnesty International's report and an earlier piece by the Phnom Penh Post.

This quote is particularly telling from one government official:

"Now, they have a health centre ... because we have provided a room for the [Centre of] Hope, who have helped the people with their health since they lived in Borei Keila," he said, adding, "We are also thinking about installing a clean water system because right now the water can be used to wash clothes but not to cook."

Relying on an NGO to provide essential social services, and not including drinking water as a basic human right, because why bother? These families have no money, no influence, often not even a legal existence - they don't count in Phnom Penh's rush for property wealth.

The Bassac slum being cleared is very near to the slum where my children were born. That slum was wiped out a while ago, and I've visited the Borei Keila "resettlement" and seen the misery there.

The community Alexandra serves have been given resettlement notices. We have no dates for when they will be evicted, what kind of compensation they will get - yet another uncertainty in their chaotic lives.

But Riverkids will follow them to wherever they go. That's our commitment.

G Market - Copion Korean Volunteers at Riverkids

2009-07-02T16:46:00.002+08:00

On June 29-30, a group of volunteers from G Market- Copion, Korea came to Riverkids and conducted some exciting and enjoyable activities with the children. They also performed some Korean traditional dance for the kids, Riverkids staff and people in the surrounding community to enjoy as well.

In addition, the volunteers donated 600 US dollars for 120 sets of school uniforms, stationary and several boxes of clothes to Riverkids. With this donation, Riverkids will be able to keep our program moving forward and we come one step closer to achieving Riverkids mission to prevent the sale of children.

Due to poverty, domestic violence, neglect, child labor, drug abuse and sexual abuse, the children lose the opportunity for school and lack the care and warmth usually provided by families. The charitable work of the volunteers from Korea at Riverkids provided the opportunity to give enjoyment, compassion and love to the children, and encourages them enormously to build self-confidence for a better education and for better lives in the future.

On behalf of Riverkids Foundation, I am very grateful to all volunteers and especially the G Market- Copion 09th Volunteers who recently spent time and gave such generous donations to Riverkids.