With so much sadness and desperation surrounding us, our team think it’s important to stop and take a moment to reflect on all the good we are doing. With your help, we are keeping each of these beautiful families fed and supported…
It has now been 80 days since we waved goodbye to our students as they left the school gates after a regular day in the classroom with their friends and teachers. At that point, we were all still uninformed of the pandemic and the repercussions that were to follow. Eighty days of re-evaluating strategies and eighty days of uncertainty. BUT, one thing is certain, it’s that we remain 100% committed to supporting the families of REACH.
Prior to COVID-19, Cambodia had among the highest malnutrition rates in Asia. According to the Poverty Profile Executive Summary, more than one third of Cambodians eat less than the daily minimum food energy requirement. Families that were already living below the poverty line, exacerbated by a further loss of income meant that it was imperative for us to direct our resources to supporting families with their basic hygiene and nutritional needs.
Wednesday 20th May marked our fourth emergency relief distribution. To date, we have distributed the following provisions to our 132 families at REACH:
We distribute the emergency relief packages on a monthly basis, and our families have reported that these provisions provide up to 3 weeks of their families needs. By eliminating a fraction of financial stress associated with food costs, the families can instead continue to focus on paying for other outgoings such as rent and electricity bills and not fall further behind on payments.
Now more than ever, we further want to continue building a positive relationship between the parents and their children’s education. To facilitate this, we have incorporated a homework scheme, whereby the parents will collect the prepared homework and return the completed work on a bimonthly basis. Since enforcing this new scheme, we have had an 86% success rate of completed homeworks returned! This is an extremely encouraging start, and we are confident it will continue during the school’s closure.
These lifeline packages and ongoing support is upholding our families hope and optimism for a positive future. Working in poverty charities comes with many heartbreaking challenges and obstacles, but the inspiring response that we have received from our beneficiaries and the incredible support from our donors is all the motivation we need to continue striving to break these families free from the poverty cycle.
