This one's for the kids... (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

Hello everyone,

I hope what I'm about to request isn't too far fetched for all of you. As stated in my last email, I've been volunteering for the "lighthouse organization" for the last 4 days. I've now planned to stay for about another 9 or 10 more days just so I can help out. I think that I've fallen in love with them, it doesn't take long.

A bit of history of this place...

- it was founded about 3 years ago

- it's run by this rich couple who don't really care about the kids, they just care about exploiting them and make a bit of money off of them, by doing children's concerts where the kids dance.

- The owners offered a homeless family to live there and take care of the now 28 kids in exchange for a salary. They haven't been paid once.

- Not many volunteers go there that often.

- only 7 out of the 28 kids are able to go to school, due to lack of uniforms

- none of them speak any english

- their clothes are old and ratty

- they only have a tiny, tiny little house (if you can call it that), about 7mX8m big, that has one room for all the kids to sleep in. The family and their infant child sleep on a wooden bed outside, underneath the house.

- they don't have a regular supply of drinking water

- they barely make it by with just rice each day and a few green vegetables that they've planted in the field.

- their teeth are rotting

In the past week....

- volunteers have come and put a lot of effort into this place.

- a doctor from England overheard a couple of the volunteers talking one night and has now been going to the orphanage every day since, he's been treating all the kids one at a time.

- about 7 or 8 of the kids have gotten their rotten teeth pulled out by a dentist

- us volunteers (Especially one named Laura, who's raised lots of money back home) have been buying food each day and giving them proper meals.

- myself and this Israeli guy found a water warehouse that is now going to deliver 3 large jugs of drinking water each day to the orphanage for the next month.

- we've gotten some english books, paper, crayons, etc for the kids to learn

- we're helping out with the cooking and hopefully soon the laundry

- we get to play and run around with the children all day long and make them SMILE and LAUGH! (To put this down in words, is literally bringing tears to my eyes)

- Now, 6 days after the doctor's been there, he's not so busy looking at ill patients all day. This means that their health is already improving!!! 6 days!

- The mother and father, who at first were very unhappy and didn't pay much attention to the orphans other than their own 3 kids are happy and showing affection to the other kids.



So now here comes your part. (I'm going to sound like Allen Thicke or Alex Trebeck on a Sunday morning Infomercial). Right now, we're off to a great start with these children that might actually have a chance of surviving in this 3rd world country. However, us volunteers are all travellers and cannot live here for the rest of our lives, nor can we keep buying food for them on a daily basis.

The one thing that we can hopefully carry on is getting new recruits, other travellers we meet in our journeys to volunteer as well. We hope that this word of mouth spreads quickly and doesn't die down in the monsoon season when the travellers start to become very sparse.

One of our jobs as volunteers is this.... to ask our friends and family to give some kind of donation. Money is one of the easiest things and probably one of the most useful things that can be given. The average income per year here in Cambodia is $286 US dollars!!!! Can you imagine that? Things are relatively cheap here, but not when there's 28 children to feed that don't have any money at all. Laura, the girl I spoke of earlier, was able to raise $900 in a matter of 2 weeks, it was all sent to her via internet banking and money wiring. Wow!!! We may think that this is lots of money, but the reality is that it's not a whole heck of a lot in the long run.

So, if you can even spare like $5.00 or $10.00 (even more if you'd like), please... Bring It On! If you have internet banking, all you need to do is provide my email adress and I'll receive it quickly. (Use the password ''LIGHTHOUSE", all capital letters) Don't worry about your money going astray, I'll make sure that the money is not given to the owners of the orphanage and that useful food or clothes are bought. Perhaps, you can even take up a donation plate at your work. C'mon you Chapters people, pull through for me on this one! Please remember that I'm only here for about 8 more days so this action needs to be quick. If I didn't have to catch a flight to Australia I'd stay longer.

Also, we've set up a P.O. box adress here for other types of donations to be sent. I'll email it off in a couple of days.


I appologize for asking you all for money, but it breaks my heart to think that these beautiful, beautiful kids will suffer. If only you could feel the love that they have. Normally when we leave for the day, the kids will always take about 5 or 10 minutes to say goodbye and they all want a hug or high-five or a kiss. Today, they all ran up to the gate of the house and baracaded it so we couldn't leave! (Again, I'm tearing) Or the last couple of days I've been working closely with 16 year old Chum-run with his English. You should see his face light up when he's able to pronouce a word correctly or he remembers a word I taught him. Its absolutley priceless.


From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all in advance for your kindness!!!

Dean.