An End to A Great Youthlinc Year

The projects are finished, the team has all gone and the Home Sweet Home Guesthouse is far too quiet. It feels good though. We got a lot of work done, met many amazing people, and I believe we made differences and differences were made in us. I'll give you a brief recap of what we were able to accomplish.


Construction: Installed 100 bio-sand water filters in families homes so they will now have clean water. We built a new set of bathrooms which included 4 new stalls and repaired the old 3 stall bathrooms at the primary school. We installed a fence at the primary school. Now, reading that sentence, as I did when our projects originally were assigned, I thought- no big deal, a fence. This fence however consisted of really huge concrete beams and heaps of hole digging. Lastly, behind the school there was a gaping ravine. The school currently has 3 classes being held under really sketchy palm roofed classrooms and one class meets under the trees. During the rains this just doesn't work. They want to use the ravine land to build classrooms on, so we filled it with dirt. Thankfully we had truck help on that one.

Medical: Taught loads of basic hygiene, dental hygiene and first aid in all of the classrooms. We also taught maturation and anti-smoking in the junior high. We worked with a group of mostly women who were participating in the micro-finance lessons and taught a variety of health lessons in conjunction with the business lessons. In all of our teaching we were able to provide take home supplies. Thanks to the Paradise Ward members for all of the great first aid supplies! We were able to send home a great many kits after providing training on how to use the supplies inside. We provided training and supplies to the local medical clinic.

Education: We taught many, many interactive English lessons in the primary school. We also stocked the library with simple English books and great Khmer books that the teachers requested. We donated over 200 pounds of school supplies to the primary school. Lastly, we took 70 school kits for kids at the Hope and Life Orphanage.

Cultural: We brought over shoes and clothing and we were able to each buddy up with a kid from the Hope and Life Orphanage and help them pick out new clothes, shoes and help them decorate their school bag. We organized a cultural panel with the junior high students. We implemented the Mondo Art Exchange project in which we taught different art lessons and had the students create art to send to another part of the world. To culminate the weeks of work, we finished off by putting on an amazing fun fair. Over 20 games were organized to accommodate the 600+ kids who attended.


Micro-finance: We were able to teach business/livestock lessons to 31 people and organize them into co-ops based on their livestock choice. Because of the great generosity of so many, we were able to distribute 25 cows, 5 sets of pigs and 1 flock of 10 chickens. We can't tell you how excited these people were to receive the livestock. At closing ceremonies the community leader let our group know that this project really has potential to change the lives of the families by providing them with a sustainable income.

Gardening: We were able to establish a demonstration/training garden at the primary school. We worked hard to create ownership over that garden with a 5th grade class. We taught the different skills necessary to maintain, upkeep and rebuild the garden when necessary. Because of the location of the school, the river floods the entire school grounds with about 3 feet of water. This means some rebuilding will need to happen after rainy season. We also did garden beautification around the school grounds. This was a lot of fun, turned out amazing and will hopefully help to really create some pride and a strong sense of place, for the students who attend the school.

This was a very successful Youthlinc year. The heat was scorching, the air was wet. It often down poured, leaving us working in the sticky mud. Despite the problems we had to work through, the crude tools we worked with, and the difficult conditions we worked in, the experience was incredible. The people are amazing- they have survived so much and it was a beautiful thing to be working along side them.