Cassils focus on fledgling, grassroots charitable organizations
Friday, August 14, 2009
Cheryl Rossi
Vancouver Courier

John Cassils had just pulled out his video camera in a village in northern Laos in 1999 when he was invited into a hut to see a shaman dancing.

John, his wife Nina and four friends had been enjoying a 10 day trip by riverboat and four wheeled drive in the mountainous area near the Chinese border. They’d asked their driver to drop them off outside the village and walked in separately with no translator, although one friend who was in the Vietnam War spoke Lao.

A couple of heaps under a blanket in the corner of the hut soon drew John’s attention. They were the still figures of two young boys. John, a former family doctor, examined the three and four year old boys and found they were nearly dead from malnutrition. One child had lost 70 per cent of his vision and the other couldn’t stand because he had lost muscle strength.

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8am Visit to Room to Read project funded by Cassils and Wettsteins

Paul Hancock, Patricia Solar, John and I traveled 40 minutes outside of Siem Reap to visit a village school library. For anyone interested in funding child education Room to Read is well positioned in Laos and Cambodia as we know from personal experience.

In Cambodia the Room to Read team has chosen to focus on all of our core programs, except for the School Room Program. They have identified library construction, Khmer language children’s books, and girls’ scholarships as three of the most important improvements we can make to the educational system and have thus chosen to focus much of their work there. The following table highlights our Cambodia team’s success to date:

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