Caring for Cambodia

December 5th- 9th, 2010

I traveled to Siem Reap, Cambodia with some of my colleagues along with the charity, Caring For Cambodia. Our goal was to setup a collaboration with CFC and IMC to help further some health initiatives seen in the Cambodian public schools. The main objective was vision screening and helping the children with vision issues get proper treatment or glasses. We also took their height and weights to calculate nutrition values of the diets and compare how they are growing and developing with other children in the world.

We had an amazing time and it felt so good to know that these people really appreciated everything we were doing, even though it was a small part of the whole puzzle. The kids were a bit timid with the vision screening, they saw it as a test and wanted to do well so many of them were very nervous.

The nutrition is really poor for most of these kids. Caring For Cambodia provides one meal a day of porridge but after our findings with the height and weights and comparing them to the World Health Organizations charts, the kids are now offered two meals a day. We might even add a supplement to the porridge to boost some of the deficiencies.

It was really amazing watching some of these little kids come to get vision tested and they were the size of an American 3 or 4 year old when they actually were 6 or 7 years old. Since going, IMC has been back 3 times making a difference each time. There are numerous schools to test and in a span of 3 days we can usually knock out about 1,000 students.

Some of the conditions we found on our trip were detached retina, cataracts, and 8 children needing glasses. Since then all have glasses and steps toward treating the others are well underway.

I was trying to get them to throw me the peace sign during the picture! They typically don't smile for pictures, I think it is a cultural thing.

We gave out stickers after their eye test and we walked through the village at the end of the day. Found the stickers plaster on some motor bikes, this one being a policeman's bike... hehe

They were so impressed that Jackie could ride a bike.

Typical house, they did have clean water pumps located in the village but we saw many of the kids swimming and bathing in that river... which I am sure was used for their waste too.

Beautiful baby with his father, he was so proud, you can just see it in his smile. These people are truly wonderful.

Liz, our general manager on her phone and a student playing with her stickers.

Worlds apart but brought together :)

Learning from the school nurse what his ideas and needs for the schools are. He is only a nurse by license but the villages use him and see him as a doctor.

Our next endeavor is to maybe sponsor another nurse for the schools so they can get more efficient medical care. Savin, the nurse, has something like 13 schools to oversee.

Height & Weights

Setting up our vision screening outside and doing the best we could to with what we had.

Other indicatives were already in place, like the importance of hand washing with soap and brushing your teeth. They did both of these at school and were so proud to show up what they learned. CFC supplies all the toothbrushes, which the teacher keeps, and toothpaste, plus soap.

A little girl that stole our heart. She was beautiful and I think she was 5 years old but looked more like 3 years old.

Usha helping her eat otherwise she would just sit there.

Medicine cabinet at one of the schools. They have a real problem with over prescribing antibiotics.

Kindergarten room

School Activity Room

Clean water provided at every school but no indoor plumbing at this one yet...

Took some time at the temples too... I love this place :)

I truly love this country and its people. Caring for Cambodia is an amazing organization and I was fortunate enough to be able to use my skills to make a little difference in some of these peoples' lives. I haven't said near enough about this trip that my emotions say I should. If you want to help from the U.S. or anywhere in the world here is the website. They always have donation opportunities for personal items like first aide and school supplies.

www.caringforcambodia.org