One of the joys of having a successful fundraiser is to be able to, for the first time, build some financial reserves for our organization and then wisely spend the funds on much deserved initiatives.

We are able to invest more into the most important commodity- Education and are sending an additional 150 children to school for the first time. We are able to fulfill a promise made to the Principal of Tapang School who had 5 new classrooms with no desks nor teacher's furniture. We  placed an order with the local carpenters and in the next few weeks we will be able to furnish the classrooms. (And furnish the local people with an opportunity to work). It costs us $35 per desk and $100 per teacher's table and blackboard. Our next mission is to provide the school with a block of toilets. They currently have only 2 toilets for over 750 children.

We have joint initiatives with Teachers Across Borders who are in Siem Reap at the moment and will be helping to further train our own teachers. We will shortly collect some library books allocated to us by Room to Read in Phnom Penh. We find that with synergy between Friends of CCDO and the various NGO's in Cambodia, we are able to make an even bigger difference.

We continue to build water wells and have built twenty five new ones since May 2011. Sponsors have come from as far as Hawaii, Chile, Australia and England as well as our those in the United States. This translates into a simple, yet powerful fact: over 1,000 new people now have fresh, clean water.

Our little engine that could is gaining steam and moving with a snowball effect.

We will have some breaking news in our next journal, so stay tuned.

Warmest Regards,

Jenni Lipa

President

Clean Village Initiative

We all take pride in our homes and want to live in a pleasant environment. Imagine how difficult it would be to maintain that pleasant home environment if you had no electricity, running water, toilets or garbage collection. This is the reality of the majority of Cambodian people in rural areas.

Realizing that the future of the children doesn't hinge only on a better education, but also on a healthier environment; we are undertaking a number of steps in the rural villages. We are encouraging the villagers to take better care of their rural compounds with small incentives. Every month the cleanest house in the village is awarded a special prize of $10. The response has been great, but we know that it is not easy to keep your home clean without amenities that we take for granted, so we are looking into a good way to introduce garbage collection and disposal as well as partnering with the villages to build more toilets. This will tremendously affect the cleanliness and decrease illness, so children will be healthier and stronger. This and better nutrition is the base of being able to learn.