THE HEALTH CENTER:
Our Health Center is due to open it’s doors on 1 April 2010. We have 5 components to this program:

1. SCHOOL HEALH CLINIC:
We all remember our little school clinic. There was a bed, thermometer, bandages, and a nurse that we could visit when our tummies ached or our tooth hurt. She would lay us down, wrap us up, and then call our mothers to pick us up.

This is a completely foreign concept in Cambodia. If a child is sick, he or she wanders home and little is known what happens next. Most of these families can’t afford medical care and worse yet most don’t know where they can obtain skilled free medical care. We have now created medical records on all 1000 children at the school, hired a pediatric trained nurse and supplied the clinic to manage basic first aid.

Mr. Chan, our local pediatric nurse, will be responsible for assessing each sick or injured child at the school. Should the child need more advanced care, he can advise the family of reliable options for medical care.

He started this week and has already made a huge impact. After shadowing the nurse at the adjacent orphanage he was able to implement some fantastic ideas. He’s now cleaned out the old library to structure the new clinic. He’s scrubbed it spotless, bought new beds, screens, mats, chairs, desks, pharmaceuticals, etc and turned this vacant space into a proper school clinic. I’m visiting the site this week and am very excited to see what he has done. With me this week are 9 enthusiastic recent medical school graduates and they’ll be performing physical exams on the 6th grade class. Thanks to Mr. Chan and is efforts, we can easily perform this task.

2. HEALTH EDUCATION PROJECT:
This little boy is fishing from a disease laden mud hole located directly on the schools grounds. A very happy lad indeed and a necessary evil in these parts of the world where many go without basic provisions such as food. However, the situation can be dramatically improved with proper education about basic hygiene. We take it for granted that he would know about diseases that fester in that mud. Most likely he doesn’t, but we can teach him.

Our education series is designed to address all of these issues and more. We have a dedicated team of medical students preparing interactive sessions with the children and teachers. These volunteers are creating guidebooks for each grade level with the ultimate goal of integrating their lessons into the current curriculum.

3. SCHOOL ABSENTEE PROGRAM:
Accountability. That’s how you make sure that nobody falls through the cracks. Many children are absent from class for a variety of reasons. We want to assure that these reasons are in the child’s best interest.

It’s unlikely, but child trafficking is not unheard of in these parts. More commonly, the child is sick at home receiving little medical evaluation. We have arranged for our local school nurse to visit the home of the child if he or she is absent for more than 2 days. With this arrangement we can account for every child.

4. NGO RESOURCE CENTER:
This is our new dental bed. Simple, but will get the job done. That job is to recruit a team of dentists to visit the school and perform dental exams. We’re fortunate that a team of dental students from The National University of Singapore is interested in filling this vacancy.
Now that we have Medical records on all of the children, we hope to recruit more medical specialties to visit and help at the school. Our nurse will systematically organize the children so that no child is left behind. If you are interested in helping out, please contact

5. EMERGENCY EVACUATION PROGRAM:
Although we hope to never implement this program, we have made provisions for the worst. The Humaneity Foundation has liaised with the Angkor Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap to receive our seriously ill or injured children. The Angkor Children’s Hospital is a reputable charitable hospital that provides free care to any Cambodian child. Please visit their website at www.angkorhospital.org to learn more.

OTHER PROJECTS:

MICRO-BUSINESS:
The Sewing project is the first micro-business supported by the Humaneity Foundation. It’s intent is to support and improve the lives of local parents who’s children attend the school. Many parents in Cambodia live far from their village based families as they can only find work in the larger cities. As a result, these children lack the support and nurturing offered from a stable family life. By bringing these parents home we’re not only providing them with the opportunity to run their own enterprise, but we’re helping ensure that the families stay together.

ENGLISH EDUCATION:
We are proud to have Sandy Heaton, from Australia, living and teaching in Kampong Thom. Sandy has created an English program from the ground up and has done a fantastic job. She now holds class for a select group of students and teachers at the school and at the adjacent orphanage. Unfortunately, Sandy will be leaving in August of 2010. We are currently looking for her replacement. If you are interested please contact us at for more information.

NEW LIBRARY CONSTRUCTION:
The old library was vastly insufficient for a student body of 1000 students. We have just recently completed the construction of the New Library and it is large enough to educate all students at the school. Our goal is to incorporate this new structure for health education sessions for the community surrounding the school

VEGETABLE GARDEN:
This was one of our first projects. In 2008 a team of volunteers put shovel to earth, seed to ground and transformed the landscape into a quality garden.

CLASSROOM REFURBISHMENT:
When the Humaneity Foundation first started at the school, the children were learning from classrooms with dirt and mud floors, dirty walls and broken furniture. We are now proud to say that we have renovated 17 of the 24 classrooms at the school.