Once a month, our REACH Siem Reap grounds fill with something a little different from the usual school-day buzz, not just students, but their families too. Parents, grandparents, siblings and guardians arrive together for community day, the monthly gathering that anchors our Rice Rewards program.
On the surface, it looks simple: families come, and they leave with rice bags. Yet anyone who has spent time at one of these sessions knows it’s never just a rice drop. It’s a chance for our team to sit with families and remind them that they are not alone in their fight against poverty.
What is a Rice Rewards Day?
That mission starts with the program itself. For many families in our REACH community, poverty and food insecurity are daily realities. Some parents feel they have no option but to take their children out of school to help earn extra income, and even families who stay enrolled face constant costs: school fees, uniforms, study materials, and transport to class.
Families consistently tell us they value education, but when survival is at stake, food takes priority. Rice Rewards exists to close that gap. Each child enrolled at REACH who maintains high attendance, at both public school and REACH, earns their family 10kg of rice, 10 eggs, and a bar of soap every month, support that scales with household size. Beyond the food itself, it eases the pressure on parents to pull children out of school, and gives our team a regular touchpoint with every family, a chance to catch a health issue or hardship early.
None of this would be possible without Shelter Real Estate, whose generosity has made this consistent support a reality for families across Siem Reap, month after month. We’re deeply grateful for everything they continue to make possible.
Our youth assisting in our Rice Rewards Session
More Than a Rice Drop
That regular contact is what makes these sessions so valuable. Alongside the food distribution, community day often includes short workshops on topics relevant to families’ health and daily lives, and time for our team to walk through the latest REACH newsletter together, keeping everyone up to date on what’s happening across the organisation. Every six months, community day includes something extra: a parent sharing session, guided by Sopheak, our Community Outreach Trainer, where parents are invited to speak on one theme, what REACH has changed for their family, for the better. Six parents shared their stories in July.
(Names have been changed for child and family protection.)
A Daughter Finishing What Her Sisters Couldn’t
Vanna’s story began with sacrifice. His two older daughters left school early to help sell goods and keep the household afloat, a choice no parent wants to make. His youngest, Sreymom, grew up watching that sacrifice happen around her, carrying real guilt about continuing to study while her family struggled. But Vanna refused to let her lose the same chance her sisters had. He encouraged her through every year of high school, and she finished it, then kept going further still, becoming the first person in her family to enter university.
Sopheak, who has worked closely with the family, recalls the father telling the room himself, in his own words: “I will do everything I can. I will not want to see my daughter quit studying.” His pride, she says, was impossible to miss, and watching him speak was one of the moments from July that has stayed with her the most.
Parent giving a speech in July Parent Sharing Session
A Shorter Walk to School
Pisey’s story was about the small things that add up. Before her daughter, Chenda, enrolled at REACH, the nearest suitable school was far enough that getting there was a daily expense the family felt keenly: petrol money, spent again and again, just to cover the distance. On a tight household budget, that cost ate into what little was left over each month, competing directly with food, medicine, and everything else the family needed to get by. At one point, it became too much. As Pisey put it: “Because my family didn’t have enough means for my child to continue studying, we decided to let her stop school.”
Since enrolling at REACH, that pressure has eased, and Chenda can now continue her studying. Moreover, REACH is close enough to home that Chenda can simply walk there, no motorbike, no petrol, no daily expense standing between her and the classroom. It sounds like a small change, but for a family watching every riel, it meant one less cost weighing on them every month, and a daughter who could get to school more consistently, on foot rather than dependent on whether there was enough fuel money that week.
The benefits reached further than transport alone. “The organisation also helps ease my family’s daily expenses, because my child already eats meals at school with confidence and safety, and we also receive rice and eggs every month,” Pisey said. “Especially, I’ve noticed that my child knows much more English than before.”
For Pisey, it’s the shorter road to school that she keeps coming back to when she talks about what’s changed. Sometimes the biggest barrier to a child’s education isn’t distance from opportunity, it’s simply the cost of the road to get there. For this family, REACH shortened that road, and brought her daughter back to the classroom.
Students walking back home after school
From Vocational Training to His Own Business
Rithy’s story stood out because of what REACH’s support made possible beyond the classroom. Years ago, he earned a scholarship to attend vocational school, where he trained to repair air conditioners and refrigerators. He worked hard, and he was good at it. But a skill without tools is just potential sitting still: he had the training to run a business, but nowhere near the money to buy the equipment and materials to start one.
It was his wife who decided not to let that gap go unspoken. During a session, she turned to Sopheak with a direct question: her husband knew how to fix broken appliances, but they had no way to buy the parts. Could REACH help? Sopheak brought the idea back to her supervisor, and REACH’s leadership agreed this was exactly the kind of opportunity worth investing in. With funding to cover his initial materials, made possible through our Outreach Program and the generosity of Delta Capita, Rotary Club of Oakleigh Clayton Huntingdale, Wendy & Julian Delchau, and Jeff & Marilyn Bidstrup, whose support sustains this program, Rithy was able to open his own small repair business right from home. Their generosity changed not only Rithy’s life, but also the lives of many others in our community.
Today, he’s still studying to advance his qualifications while running that business alongside it. Neighbours bring him their broken air conditioners and refrigerators, word has spread the old-fashioned way, mouth to mouth, until his mornings are consistently busy with repair work. He also helps fix appliances for REACH families whenever they break down. Sopheak sees his story as proof of something REACH wants every family to know: a skill doesn’t have to stay a private hope. What started as one scholarship, one conversation, and one small act of belief has become a livelihood, and a model for what’s possible when opportunity meets determination.
Rithy’s own message to other families was simple: “I hope that all the parents and families will try to take part in as many activities as possible at REACH. And if there’s any skill you know how to do, keep trying and don’t give up. If you need help, you can always reach out to REACH.”
Father receiving business supplies from our Outreach team
The Father Who Shows Up
Vuthy is known at REACH for one thing: he never says no. While his wife earns the family’s income at the market, he holds the household together at home, taking their daughter to school every morning and helping his wife in between. Whenever REACH needs an extra pair of hands, he’s there, in the kitchen, the garden, or once, helping repair a badly damaged section of the roof, now fully functional thanks in part to his help.
Sopheak describes him as a role model for other fathers, someone whose hope is simple: he wants his daughter to grow up like the young people he’s watched build good futures through REACH.
In his own words, Vuthy shared what that support has meant for his family: “Since my child started studying at REACH, she has received English language education for free and learned much more than before, without me having to pay any tuition fees. My family’s life has also improved, especially since we receive rice and eggs every month, which helps ease our family’s expenses as well.”
Asked why he keeps showing up to volunteer, his answer was just as heartfelt: “It is my own heartfelt wish to help the organisation, to give back in return for what it has done for me.”
Vuthy’s family wasn’t alone in this. Of the six parents who spoke in July, two more shared stories cut from the same cloth, monthly rice and eggs easing the daily weight on their households, and children whose lives had quietly changed for the better since coming to REACH.
Volunteering parents giving the garden roof a well-earned upgrade.
What Comes After
Parents aren’t the only ones who take the floor at these sessions. At one recent Rice Rewards day, four students who had just completed Grade 12 stood in front of the very same families and shared their own reflections on what REACH had made possible as they stepped into adulthood. They were very open about where they’d started, the financial pressure their parents had carried for years, and the moments when it would have been easier, understandable even, to leave school and start earning instead.
What they described was a quieter kind of support running underneath all of it: a bag of rice arriving each month that meant one less thing their parents had to sacrifice for. One of those students, Sreynin, captured what that support had meant for her future: “If it weren’t for REACH’s support, when I graduated from high school, I wouldn’t have known what to do next, and I wouldn’t have been able to get the scholarship I needed to attend college and achieve my dream.” Hers wasn’t just a story about staying in school, it was about arriving at graduation with a real path forward, instead of a question mark.
By the time the four graduates had finished speaking, several parents in the room had already told our team something telling: they wanted these young people held up as role models for their own children. Not distant success stories from somewhere else, but young people who had grown up in the very same community, and made it through to the other side. For families still in the middle of that journey, it was proof, standing right in front of them, of exactly where consistent support can lead.
Sopheak’s Reflections
Sopheak, our Community Outreach Trainer, sits with each family ahead of these sessions and hosts them on the day. What struck her most was how far the parents were willing to go once they started talking, sharing far more openly than she’d expected. That gratitude never stops moving her. As she put it, “that day in each month mattered because it brought families together in shared joy and hope.” Hearing each other’s stories really inspires families, she says. It’s the time that they feel like they are not alone, secure the food they need to survive and sustain themselves, and move forward toward a brighter future.
Sopheak, our Community Outreach Trainer sharing our newsletter
Beyond the Rice Bag
Food insecurity is only one part of what these families navigate. Isolation, and the sense that no one else understands what you’re going through, can be just as heavy. A child cannot thrive in isolation from their family; a parent’s worry follows a child into the classroom too. Supporting a student well means supporting the household around them, treating parents not as bystanders to their children’s education, but as people with their own resilience and stories worth hearing. For a few minutes in each session, parents weren’t just collecting rice, they were standing in front of their community, being heard.
As one school year closes, we’re already excited for the next school year. Just this week, we hosted our first round of placement tests for kids within our current families to enter our Kindergarten Program and Mixed-ability class. The enrolment of new kids and families is now underway, along with house visits to welcome them into the REACH community for our next academic year commencing in November. New faces at the gate, new friendships in the classroom, and no doubt, more stories just like these ones waiting to unfold.