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Poverty Alleviation Projects
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August 31, 2011
Dear Friends:
Welcome to your August report for The $10 Club (at long last)!
In December 2010, the Cambodian orphanage run by a local group in Siem Reap Province, ACODO (Assisting Cambodian Orphan and the Disabled Organization), came to The $10 Club looking for support to feed the orphans there after a flooding crisis made access to daily food provisions more complicated and expensive. Together, we stepped up to the challenge and provided sustenance to 65 children there for more than a month.
Unfortunately, the rainy season in Southeast Asia has been dire this year as well, costing the region billions of dollars. The orphanage has again suffered from massive flooding and asked for our assistance.
The Siem Reap River, which flows close to the orphanage, continues to rise after these latest heavy rains. The orphanage was fortified with sandbags but flooding was unavoidable. According to Hengchhea Chheav, Founder & President of ACODO, “The flood this year is worse than last year. The flood waters are very deep and it will last longer. We are desperately in need of food relief for our children. Please help us do fundraising for food relief.”
The water has been receding in the city very slowly and the only ways to get to the market are to walk, waist deep (or higher) in water, or pay for a big truck. The flooding has prevented the children from being able to attend school and learn English. The smaller children especially are imperiled by the high waters and drowning remains a risk.
This month, 250 of us joined together to donate $2,500 to ACODO to underwrite the nutrition needs of the orphans they serve. Thank you.
The children served by the orphanage are desperate and need every ounce of help that can be offered. Take Mai Som, for instance. She is 9 years old, disabled (missing her leg), very sick and desperately in urgent need of bone cancer treatment. She has been transferred to an emergency room at a children’s hospital in Siem Reap. The orphanage is her only stable, positive influence.
The orphanage serves kids who came from the streets, who lived in fear, who witnessed and were subjected to violence, and who had nowhere else to turn. There is only so much we can do. We can’t cure Mai Som’s cancer. We can’t make the rains stop. But together we can make sure that, for another month at least, all the children there have nourishing meals to keep them going in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Saving the world, ten dollars at a time,
Adam
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