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!
Chrismas story
Dear Friends and partners, It's that time of the year when we want to take a moment to wish each and every one of you the best of the holiday season. December is a month when we refuse all teams; it's a time for me to visit all the project sites, a process that can be very tiring but also very exalting. Let me share a bit of yesterday's site visit.
Yesterday, we went to the countryside to visit some of the families that we work with in Prey Veng. It was a hard visit in some ways. Our first stop was to a community in a district that we started about 6 months ago. The surroundings were very beautiful - the fields were all colors of green - filled with what I thought was good rice. We started talking to some of the families - there were only moms and children and a couple of grandpa's there. I asked how things were and they started to share their stories. All of the husbands had left and gone to the city - the beautiful fields were full of useless stalks of rice. There had been very little rain and they didn't have wells. The rice stalks bore no fruit. They were very hungry and the dads had to go and find work in the city so that they could survive until next year. The village has 126 families, 25 of the families were children who were orphaned - their parents had died of AIDS - 5 more families had parents who are now sick with this disease - we are worried about how many more will be affected in another year. I was pretty sad when I left - how do we help these people. Our next stop was 10 kilometers away at a village where we have worked for the last 2 years. Here the families were excited to see us. They had gotten a well from us 8 months ago - as the contractor was drilling the well, the families asked him to drill a second well just 2 feet away but with no pump. They paid for this with their savings. A few weeks later they had saved enough as a group to buy a diesel pump. They hooked the 2 wells together and then turned on the pump - the water just gushed forth. These 5 families had never grown rice because they never had water - they took us out to their fields - we were stunned - each family had grown rice twice in the past 6 months - the yield was very good. They were now starting their third planting - this had never been done before in the district - a historical moment.. Then they showed me the vegetable gardens that each family had. The gardens had a variety of vegetables and spices growing. What was so very good was that the husbands were all there doing the work. How good it was to see. This morning we are back in the office, making preparations for our Tabitha party. It's a special one because we are celebrating our Tenth Christmas together. The staffs are practicing the Christmas pageant, their version of it - it has great meaning for we are celebrating the birth of Christ so long ago. He, too, was born of mean estate. We can celebrate because of Christ's birth, we can celebrate because His birth created Tabitha, we can celebrate because each of you give us Christmas through-out the year , we can celebrate because, given time, our hungry villages will no longer be hungry. On behalf of all the staff and the families we work with, I wish you a blessed Christmas season and the very best of 2005. Janne Ritskes
