Helping Change the World for Children in Rural Cambodia

Children are the innocent victims of the most drastic consequences of poverty. In Cambodia, thousands of children die each year of preventable and treatable disease and it is not uncommon for a child to die of complications from respiratory infections, diarrhea, and diseases which are practically eradicated in the more developed countries.

In this impoverished and battered country, the mortality statistics are earthshaking:

• 15% of Cambodian children die before the age of 5
• 35% of Cambodian children are not immunized for polio, measles, or diphtheria
• 45% of Cambodian children under 5 are moderately to severely underweight
• 12,000 Cambodian children under the age of 15 live with HIV/AIDS

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I walked out of my apartment today to go & buy something at the pharmacy & a lady selling Myanmar homemade snacks, whom I had talked to before, was coming down our little lane. When she saw me, she broke into a smile and said, ‘Auntie, you’re still here. I haven’t seen you for so long so I thought that you had left.’ When I asked her how she was, she said, ‘Oh, I’m not very well. I’m losing my voice so I can’t call out what I’m selling very well.’ She looked very thin. I asked her if she had sold much that day. She then took down the big pot on her head & showed me the banana-leaf wrapped snacks in the pot. There were probably around 40 left. I asked her how much they were & she said, ‘The usual. 200 kyats each (about 15c.). I said that I would like to buy some, but she said, ‘No. I’m going to give you some.’ I didn’t feel good about that, but I could tell that she would not feel good if I paid for it, so I said, ‘Why don’t you come into my apartment for a little while so we can visit.’ She agreed to that, but she was still insisting on just giving me some of her snacks, so I said, ‘Why don’t we trade our snacks? I’ll eat yours & you can eat mine & we can have a cup of green tea together.’ So, that’s what we did. I had forgotten that last year I had asked her how many children she had (5) and that I had given her clothes for her children, until she reminded me.

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Greetings from Yangon.

Day I
Yesterday we went to visit several villages on the opposite side of river with a new guide because foreigners can’t go with us. We talked also with several locals along the way. Oh a very poor area with the houses submerged in water. Sending you some pictures I took. We will be going there on Sunday to buy some food and give it to some families, so I will be using some of the money from our own meal fund. There is a big school nearby but it seems impossible to give to everyone from our own meal fund because there’s a lot of students to feed, maybe when we go there next time I will try to learn more of some possibilities. Next trip we will give some money to a few mother’s to start little businesses of selling fruits in town. I don’t know really know whom to help since all the people are so poor and a lot of them, maybe a thousand families or more. We talked with the village chief and he said there is no problem with the government interfering.

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