Students' health and wellbeing

For many families in Cambodia, eating a balanced diet that provides everything their body needs can be a challenge. Rice is the staple food here, and if families can afford to, they will make fish and vegetable soups or side dishes on top. Still, these dishes might not be sufficient and therefore quite often people go without the vitamins and nutrients they need to improve their health.

In order to help our students grow up to be healthy and strong, we provide vitamin drinks or pills whenever we have them in stock, which unfortunately is not as often as we would like. If you would like to help us provide them more consistently, please visit www.khmerchild.org/donations and get in touch.

The teachers discussing what the drinks are.

Preparing the vitamin drinks, they came in a number of flavours

But not all kids thought they tasted as they thought!

Flying Doctors of America

Every year FKC support the Flying Doctors of America in their amazing mission to help as many Cambodians as possible. This year a total of 13 doctors and 2 volunteers came over, ranging from dentists and pediatricians to chiropractors and general practitioners.They worked solidly over the week to offer advice, treatment and medication to over 1000 patients.

On their final afternoon of the trip they even found time to come visit us at FKC, where we put on a few songs and a traditional dance or two so they could relax!

This year they went to 4 different clinics in 4 different districts:
Srae Nouy Commune        - 235 patients
Chanleas Dai Commune   - 307 patients
Svay Chek Commune       - 281 patients
Sro Nge Commune           - 317 patients
 
We'd like to thank them again on behalf of Cambodia, and hopefully see them again next year!

Interested in becoming a flying doctor? Check out their site -  http://www.fdoamerica.org/

Our team taking their personal details and what was wrong

Patients ranged from babies to the elderly

The dental surgery was in high demand due to poor oral
hygiene in Cambodia. Toothbrushes were handed out to
each patient and they were shown how to brush properly

Medicine was brought from the US and any further supplies
bought in Cambodia. Here are two volunteers helping dispense
the medicine according to what the patients need.

The team on the fourth and final day of the mission. Tired
but extremely happy with their efforts. Congratulations
on a great job and thanks for everything!

Healthy food, healthy minds.

A good start to the day includes a filling, healthy breakfast that gets your brain in gear and your hands writing!

Before we set up our own tuck shop many of the children were feasting on sugary snacks and energy drinks, meaning they would be hyper for the first hour and tired the second. Unfortunately this is the case across Cambodia, as the cheapest products to purchase are full of sugar and other chemicals.

We decided to offer our children something different, and now cook them a porridge in the morning and offer baguettes in the afternoon. We have one sweet snack, which is sweet bread covered in sesame seeds, but we have got rid of all energy drinks and switched to soy milk instead. Let's hope the students reap the rewards of having extra brain power at exam time!

Our tuck shop serving up cheap snacks

A couple of the students tucking into a nutritious
lunchtime meal

One student opts for a smaller snack

Our recently donated water system, all water is
filtered before it can be drunk.

A week of hard work and great outcomes

In my last post I told you about what was coming up in November - well here's an update!

Fundraising

So far so good - with two weeks left to go until the fundraising ends we have raised over $2000. However there is still quite a distance to go, with $4500 needed to complete the project. We are talking, e-mailing, networking, updating, blogging, tweeting and reporting everywhere we can to raise awareness and try to hit the target! A big thanks to those who have donated so far, and a huge thanks to those that are going to keep spreading the message and sending donations our way. There will be a real big push in the last week so please support us.

Flying Doctors of America (FDoA)

The week long work of consulting, diagnosing and treating is over, and has been hugely successful. A total of 12 doctors came to Cambodia and traveled to a different district each day to offer their expertise and skills to the local community.We'll be posting something specifically to report on the Flying Doctors - so check back soon!

New student registration

On Saturday 9th November we invited all parents who wanted to register their children at the school. We asked them to come from 8 - 10am but the reality was they turned up at 7am and carried on coming until 3pm! It was a remarkable turnout, especially with the amount of younger children that turned up. Unfortunately we have a limited number of spaces so we are now busy working through the applicants and placing them in order of need.

Busy November!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, we've got a busy month ahead we've been busy planning for!


The Flying Doctors arrived yesterday, they are a team of American Doctors from different disciplines. They will be visiting a different province around Siem Reap for four days, meeting anyone with an illness or problem they want diagnosed or treated. Last year the doctors saw hundreds of people every day, we hope they can hit the same numbers this year and provide free healthcare to them all.

Our teachers and other staff help translate for them, so the school pulls on all its resources to ensure we can run both projects for the week. Fortunately we have a number of volunteers for the week ahead which will certainly help share the work!

We've also been busy with our fundraiser, and we hope to raise the rest of the money as soon as possible so we can crack on with the building and get our students back to school. Here's the link again if you missed our last post: www.youcaring.com/buildmeup