Newsletters

With our regular newsletters, we aim to keep you posted on all the interesting and important news and updates of our programs and various activities. Enjoy reading! 

May 15, 2013

            	
Dear friends and partners,
For many schools in South East Asia the school year is coming to an end. With the ending there is always the planning of the next school year. May I ask all house building teams to submit their dates for house building for the following school year – for teams that are not a school – if you are planning on coming – could you send us your dates – the house building calendar is filling up fast and we would like to make sure that we provide the best service that we can to all of our teams. Thanks so much.
With the year end looming in schools, my daughter Miriam, like so many others is going through the process of tests, papers, etc. One of these was for mathematics – something that Miriam tolerates but says – gee mum, do you even use these functions? Yes, I said – help me with the statistics for this particular family – and so we sat down and did some basic functions.
                
Chet Sakun is a farmer in our Banteay Meanchaey project. 3years ago he received a field pond from us. Now a bit of science for my young lady came into the picture – the pond is fed by seepage – the soil is clay and the water table is dispersed – meaning that water seeps into the pond year round. Chet Sakun has six children, his house was made from thatch – his family struggled to survive. With the pond things changed very quickly.
      
Sakun has three hectares of land which he uses to full capacity. He grows 4 different crops – chilies, eggplant, Spanish and spring onions and long beans. Over the three years of growing food – Sakun saved enough to improve his pond usage by buying and installing an irrigation system that allows water to feed his crops without waste.
        
Now for the math part of this miracle. The chilies are grown year round – he can do 5 crops – the harvest is every 6 weeks and lasts for 20 days. Sakun sells 50 kilos of chilies for twenty days at 7000 riel a kilo ($1.75) and then must replant. How much does he earn – I asked.  $8,750.00 USD.  The eggplants are grown for twelve months – snip off, and they grow again each month. These are harvested for 15 days – large eggplants average 50 kilos per day and the small ones an average of 70 kilos per day – both are sold for 1000 riels (.25) per kilo. How much does he earn - $5,850.00 USD. And so on with the onions – income of $3,500 USD and long beans $1300.00 USD.
Miriam just looked at me – just numbers mum, just numbers. No, said I, this is translated into real life – from this money, Sakun went from a thatch house to a house of cement and wood, he has bought all the basic of life, bought cows, chickens and pigs, has transportation, his kids who are old enough, are in school – Sakun and his wife are happy – they work hard and life is good.
  
As the school year draws to a close – so too does working with a number of families like Chet Sakun – except that he has now become our ambassador and volunteers to other families – he reaches out and teaches, he encourages and others are following in his footsteps.  This is more than math – it is about life itself.
I thank all of you who have made the math so very possible – I thank all who teach our children the mysteries of maths, science and so much more, I thank my God, who made it all.  Happy summer to you students, teachers and parents – you make such a difference in the lives of so many,
Janne
PS: If you have not yet joined the 1 in a Million Campaign – for the Nokor Tep Women’s Hospital  do join the many who have – just click on the below:
  http://www.tabithausa.org/Tabitha_USA/Campaign_for_Nokor_Tep.html