Hello again to our donors and friends.  I want to give a special thank you to our wonderful donors who have supported us during this last financial year.  You have made possible  a number of exciting initiatives during the year which you will have read about in previous newsletters.

Our main fundraiser this year is the sale of beautiful Pierro wine which has been donated to us.  This is a great opportunity to buy fine wine and support the education of seriously disadvantage children.  The new order process is very easy- just click on this link to Cellarone
or email carfletcher.c@gmail.com and I will arrange your purchase.

Good news – the rainy season has started – so essential for Cambodia’s main crop, not to mention our vegie garden.

As usual there is lots happening at our rural education Centre and our new high school Centre in Siem Reap.  A number of our older students have been attending a leadership training course which culminated in a camp which all agreed was a fantastic experience.

We have just conducted a training course on communication for staff and children at our rural Centre which has really made a positive difference within the Centre.

Khmer  New Year was celebrated with a party and fun and games before the children departed to spend time with their families.

The commencement of the rainy season is a time for replanting our vegetable garden. The garden continues to be amazingly productive and the children love picking their own produce and watching our cook turn it into delicious meals.

Training for our animal husbandry project has started.  The aim of the pilot program is to test the viability of raising ducks and pigs as a means of enabling some of our poorest families to make an income.

Thank you once again for your interest and support.  You really are helping to transform the lives of these seriously disadvantaged children and their communities.

Carolyn Fletcher
Founder and Executive Director

Please help us to continue our successful programs by going to our website donate page GIVE NOW

Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for the latest news.

Please go to Travel Giver to book your travel and ensure a percentage of your costs will go to Opportunity Cambodia.

Nick Fletcher / Newsletter /

Hello again to all our supporters and friends.

I begin with a reminder that our main fundraiser for this year is the sale of wine donated by Pierro Vineyards in Western Australia.  This is a great opportunity to buy premium wine and help educate the seriously disadvantaged children at our Centre.

Buy wine and help educate our children

There’s lots happening at our Children’s Education Centre.  A generous donor has enabled us to run an art program with a visiting artist from Siem Reap.  The children are loving the classes and I think we have some budding young artists!

Our English classes are going really well now that we have a full time teacher.  Phearom has trained a couple of our older children, who want to be teachers, to teach some of the basics and help our youngest children with their homework.  This has proved a great success and our ‘student teachers’ are really benefiting from the experience!

Hygiene and dental care classes are fun and an important part of our programme.

Another year another Puppet Parade!  The children love the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Siem Reap, meet children from other NGOs and engage in a really creative experience

Our new Centre in Siem Reap, for our high school students and those doing vocational training, is proving very successful.  An unintended highlight is the open air roof top space where a cool evening breeze makes it a popular spot for our English classes.

Some of our oldest boys are now attending vocational training in Siem Reap.  Choy, pictured here is planning to start a motorcycle repair business in our Commune when he completes the course.

Thanks to our sports coach our football teams are now competing in Siem Reap, the cheer squad are just as enthusiastic.

They all love a cool off in the lake after the match

This year we want to raise funds to provide an early learning centre in one of our poorest communities.

Some of our prospective pupils – without our support they will not be able to go to school.

Many many thanks again for your interest and support

Carolyn Fletcher
Founder and Executive Director

Please help us to continue our successful programs by going to our website donate page GIVE NOW

Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for the latest news.

Please go to Travel Giver to book your travel and ensure a percentage of your costs will go to Opportunity Cambodia.

Nick Fletcher / Newsletter /

Buy wine and help educate our children

I want to start this newsletter by thanking all our wonderful, generous donors – those who support our education program, and those who support our community development program.

You really are helping to transform the lives of seriously disadvantaged children and their communities.

We are now coming to the end of another eventful year at Opportunity Cambodia’s Education Centre.  It is wonderful to be able to report again that our students are healthy and doing well at school.

We are very proud of all our primary school students and special congratulations to those who received prizes for academic achievement at the end of the school year.

Last month our oldest group of students became the first young people from our Commune to go to High School (years 10-12) in Siem Reap.  Teaching in rural areas like ours is really substandard and we felt that these able and ambitious students would not be able to compete with city students for places at college/university if we were not able to support them at High School in Siem Reap.

This is an expensive initiative but we believe we are educating future leaders in their chosen fields, leaders Cambodia sorely needs.

The photo above shows our rented premises.  We have now hired staff  and the students are settling in happily to life and school in Siem Reap.

Before we moved into our Siem Reap home we held the traditional blessing ceremony which takes place when a new house is built or new occupants move into an existing dwelling.

Some of our older children have recently taken part in a leadership training program in Siem Reap.  This program is run by Michelle Morin of Possibilities World and our students always enjoy and benefit greatly from the program.

Our volley ballers go from strength to strength under Chheng’s tuition, as do our soccer players.  It is great to see the children’s skills and confidence developing and their excitement when they challenge some of the city teams!

The rainy season has flooded Preah Kok village again.  However it has also delivered much needed water to fill the reservoir we have recently built in this impoverished village from which many of our children come.  This initiative, together with supply of filters, will provide clean drinking water all year round for this community for the first time.

I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and a joyful New Year

Many many thanks  again for your interest and support

Carolyn Fletcher
Founder and Executive Director

Please help us to continue our successful programs by going to our website donate page GIVE NOW

Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for the latest news.

Please go to Travel Giver to book your travel and ensure a percentage of your costs will go to Opportunity Cambodia.

Nick Fletcher / Newsletter /

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I have recently returned from our Children’s Education Centre in Cambodia and am delighted to report that the year has got off to a very good start.

Our vegetable garden is brimming with good things as a result of the children’s hard work.

In rural locations such as ours there is a chronic lack of resources and facilities, and the standard of teaching in the local schools is very poor.  Our constant challenge is to be able to provide reasonable quality teaching and resources to supplement what is available locally.  This means bringing personnel from Siem Reap, or taking our children to Siem Reap,  both of which are difficult and expensive.

However we now have part-time Computer, English and Sports teachers who are really enjoying working in such a different environment and with such keen and responsive students.

There was great excitement when a large box of English reading books arrived – a big thank you to the boys at Knox Grammar School who donated the books

Our sports coach is providing general PE and coaching in volley ball and soccer, and we hope it won’t be long before our kids can compete with other teams in Siem Reap.

Morning exercises with coach (in red)

Four of our year 9 students are attending a youth leadership course over 6 weekends in Siem Reap. This is a great experience for them, and while they are learning a lot they are also having fun.

The Giant Puppet Parade has become a major feature on the Siem Reap calendar.  20 of our grades 4-6 students went to Siem Reap for two puppet making workshops and then joined in the big Parade a week later. It is just the greatest fun experience for the kids.

In the making

The finished product

Our volunteer, Brian, is back and we are continuing our community development program supplying more water filters and tanks for families who do not have access to clean drinking water. We are not able to dig wells in our area and so we have acquired some land close to our poorest families where we will dig a pond to harvest rain water.  This will provide year round water for drinking (using filters) and irrigating home vegetable growing.

Two of our students outside their homes

Thank you to all our wonderful, generous donors – those who support our education program, and those who support our community development program.
You really are helping to transform the lives of these seriously disadvantaged children and their communities.

Please help us to continue our successful programs by going to our website donate page GIVE NOW

Carolyn Fletcher
Founder and Director

Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for the latest news.

Please go to Travel Giver to book your travel and ensure a percentage of your costs will go to Opportunity Cambodia.

Carolyn Fletcher / Newsletter /

GIVE NOW

I have just arrived back from a visit to Cambodia and would like to bring you up to date on some of the developments at our children’s education centre.

BACK TO SCHOOL

The children returned at the beginning of October after their 2 months school holidays.
They are all in great form and looking forward to the year ahead.

Crossing the river after school.

One of our new girls is Vet.  She is 8 years old and comes from a large and destitute family.
She is able to attend our Centre thanks to a generous donor who will support her through her education.  She is so proud of being a ‘school girl’.  And is unrecognisable from the ragged little urchin who arrived on day one!

The children were no sooner back at school when another national holiday occurred – there are so many in the Cambodian calendar!

Bon Om Touk or the Cambodian Water Festival, is celebrated in November on the full moon. The festival lasts for three days and commemorates the end of the country’s rainy season, as well as the reversal of the flow of the Tonle Sap River. Festivities include boat races and concerts.   We brought all the children up to Siem Reap to watch the boat races on the River –  very noisy and exciting.   Below some of the children in their new blue Opportunity Cambodia tee shirts.

Watching the boat races on the River

Boat races on the River

At the end of the wet season some of our families decamp to Tonle Sap Lake to fish.  They then dry the fish to provide protein for their diet during the dry season.  Fish is a very important part of the menu at our Centre.

Families often take their children out of school when they move to the Lake but we are able to ensure that our students continue at school and are cared for while their relatives are away.

THANK YOU NRMA

The NRMA has presented us with 6 computers – a wonderful donation which included a technical expert to install the computers.  Chris spent two days at our Centre making sure everything worked in our technically challenging environment!

We are thrilled with the outcome and the children were  so grateful they performed several dances in Chris’s honour!

EXTRA CURRICULA ACTIVITIES

We have commenced our Inspiration and Motivation program, with our first speaker being Sokha Sam.  Sokha is a Cambodian woman from a very simple rural village who has worked her way up from little education and a job as cleaner at a Siem Reap hotel, to an MBA and a job as Manager of the hotel.  Her story is an inspiration to all the children but particularly to the girls who still face family pressures to leave school at primary level, if they go to school at all, to work in the home and to marry early.

Sporting facilities are non- existent in our local school and in the local commune.  So we have started a program to teach the children soccer and volley ball, and we hope that in time they will be able to go to Siem Reap to compete with the city school teams.

Chris braves the Cambodian heat to do a little soccer training!

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

We are currently conducting a comprehensive survey of one of the critically impoverished communities where a number of our students live.  The data we collect will form a sound basis for the community development work that we are in the process of undertaking in the community.  The priority of course is clean drinking water and sanitation.  We are also planning to enable some income earning opportunities particularly for the women.

We couldn’t support and educate so many poor children without your interest and support.  They are terrific kids and deserve the opportunity they are getting.
A very big and heartfelt thank you to all our wonderful donors.

This Christmas please think about making a donation to our education program.  We would love to enable more children to gain the very clear benefits of good health and education that our students receive.

Carolyn Fletcher

Founder and Director

Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for the latest news.

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Carolyn Fletcher / Newsletter /