Opportunity Cambodia wishes all our generous donors and friends

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A WONDERFUL YEAR IN 2018 

We are finishing our year on a high note with all our programs on course and producing great results:

The first year of our pre-school program has proved really successful and we now have the first group of 6 year olds starting at the local primary school.

The family income support program is also delivering results – in the form of piglets in surprising numbers!

Our Primary and Secondary school support program – our original project started 10 years ago – continues to enable children living in extreme poverty to gain an education and training.

Our high school program is enabling able students from our primary/secondary program to advance to high school and vocational training in Siem Reap.

Pre-school program: 

This year three primary schools in Sydney – Concord Primary, Mortlake Primary and Marie Bashir Primary – have joined together to fundraise and support our pre-school program. The schools have been really inventive in their fundraising efforts, and they see this relationship as a wonderful way for their pupils to learn about Cambodia and at the same time help less fortunate children.

We thank the staff and pupils of these schools for their support, and we look forward to growing our association in 2018.

Primary/secondary program
We have recently been informed that our commune of 14 villages will be expanded, taking in 2 of the floating villages on Tonle Sap Lake. It is quite a long but beautiful trip by boat across the vast lake to the villages.

We are accepting a number of children from the villages. They will be need to be weekly boarders at our rural Centre.

These children work on and around the boats from a very young age and usually don’t attend school for more than a few years, if at all.

High school program: 

In Siem Reap our high school program is producing some outstanding results.

We are tremendously proud of our Year 11s – Srei Penh top of her class of 25 students, Seng Heul 2nd in the class and Nasee 6th. They are competing with city students who have had a much superior education throughout primary and secondary school.

Unfortunately we have really outgrown our rented building in Siem Reap as we now have over 20 of our students in high school. We want to enable more rural students to attend high school in the city so we are searching for a bigger building to rent. We would like to build a new boarding centre for the longer term. This will be a financial challenge!

This Christmas you might like to make a donation towards the high school education of our disadvantaged rural students.

DONATE

Besides going to school our highschoolers have the opportunity for lots of extra curricula activities.

Leadership training workshop below – our older students just love the workshops with the opportunity for creative thinking, exchange of ideas, and meeting other students.

Some of our high school students attend a vocational training familiarisation at the Victoria Hotel in Siem Reap. Training in hospitality is a popular choice for school leavers.

Our family support program: 

Sadly the rainy season has once again left a trail of damage.

Despite efforts to repair it before the rainy season our road has fared badly.

Some of our families spend much of the rainy season surrounded by water – very unhealthy!

When the rain stops we are planning to put in a drainage system to mitigate the worst of the flooding in this community.

The families are doing very well with their pig breeding program – despite the floods this pig has 14 healthy piglets which we managed to move to higher ground.

As the year draws to a close I want to thank all of you who have supported Opportunity Cambodia in some way this year – our donors and our volunteers.

If you are not already a donor please consider making a donation or sponsoring a child. GIVE NOW 

Any donation you make will go directly to support our students. All administrative, travel and fundraising costs are privately funded.

If you wish to support our community development program (animal raising and community health) you can indicate this in the special message box if you are donating through the GIVE NOW page of our website.

HAVE A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS 

Carolyn Fletcher AM
Founder and Executive Director

The last of our beautiful Pierro wine has been reduced to $250 for a case of 12 bottles.

If you would like to buy some wine please email Carolyn Fletcher and she will organise payment and delivery – carfletcher.c@gmail.com

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