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! 

Feb 7, 2006

            	
Dear friends and partners, Happy 2006 to each and every one of you. Seems like the greetings are a bit late - this year I had my sister and her husband visiting for the month of January - a rare occasion - one that I and Miriam celebrated with thankfulness. One of the questions they asked is how do we decide on where to work - a question often asked by many of you. Let me share how the process worked to open up in our newest province of Svay Rieng this January.
                
Part of the vision of Tabitha Cambodia is to reach out to the very poorest throughout every province in Cambodia. During our annual staff meetings in July, Pat our manager in Prey Veng asked for permission to open in Svay Rieng this program year. We all had heard stories of the poverty of this province so the staff gave him the unanimous support to investigate the possibilities.
 
Pat, like all my staff, know they need each others support to convince me and to receive my permission to open in a new area. In December I was invited by Pat and his staff Ponluck and Choeun as well as Srei, Heng and Nari to please come and see the work in Prey Veng. I knew in my heart it was going to be one of those days.
They brought me to a village of Prek Sneu - an area which I had seen 2 years before. The poverty had been hurtful to see then - people full of despair - no incomes, no food, pain and suffering etched in the faces of young and old.
This time, there was no pain - the faces were etched in joy and in anticipation of what they wanted to show me. A team of house builders from our local international school had come and built houses there 2 years ago. We had put in three wells and the families had put in another 2 wells. One after another showed me their work - for the first time in remembered history - all the families had grown 3 crops of rice - half the families were raising pigs - others raised ducks - all had chickens - they had formed groups of 5 families and each group had set aside a quarter hectare to grow vegetables - and most remarkable of all was that each family had made their own private fish pond - they were all raising fish - 1500 in one pond, 2000 in another 1300, in another. Fish is cheap during the rainy season but becomes very expensive during the dry season - the water from the wells keeps the water level up in the ponds.

        
I laughed at their joy - how much income do you make each day I asked - the average was 10,000 riels a day - about $2.50 per day - and they had all the food they needed. What was wonderful to see was that the men folk were all home - working hard to make a better life. Their smiles were something to see.
And then the staff took me to Mesang District - it's on the border with Svay Rieng - here we met the village chief and as we walked through his village the poverty was hurtful to see.  The houses were decrepit - the children - malnourished and dirty - the women with downcast eyes - and the men - well, the men had all left to find work on the border with Thailand. Then was saw a car with its trunk open and women and children gathered around - in the trunk were gifts of clothes and pretty hair bands - enticement to take the children away to work on the border. We were deeply offended by what we saw.
 
This, said Pat, is where we have our new district in Prey Veng - and then he pointed to a line of trees in the distance - that, he said, is Svay Rieng - in this area, there are more than 2000 families living in poverty - in Svay Reing - there is even more. Please, may we start there? I looked back at the car and the torn expressions of need and despair on the faces of the mothers as they struggled to say no - to keep their children, I said yes.
Pon Luck was appointed the new manager in Svay Rieng and rather than take his annual holidays - he and Pat went and opened our newest province - in less than 6 weeks - Pon Luck has enrolled 200 families in our programs. In two years, I hope to write another newsletter about the changes in the lives of these families.
None of this would be possible without each of you. It is your support and your faithfulness that gives us the ability to be supportive and faithful to the families that need us the most.
I thank my God for His faithfulness in my life - I thank each of you for your faithfulness to us.
Janne