“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” –Demosthenes

Over the past couple of months the Spitler School’s small opportunities are showing signs of expanding to greater opportunities, with the help of many caring people and a talented staff.

We are very excited that Sarin has finally been able to launch the much anticipated road project. Since the very beginnings of the school, five years ago, the road into the village and to the school has been a difficult issue. During the dry season it is merely inconvenient to slowly pick your way around all of the holes and ruts, but during the rainy season the road becomes a major problem for anyone attempting to get into the school. We have had our share of tourist groups whose buses have sunk into the mud, or simply had to cancel their visit. Our teachers arrive at school muddy from a slippery fall from their bicycles or motor bikes. Our students wade through filthy standing water to reach the school, and their parents struggle to get to their jobs in the city and return with food for the family.

After completing our classroom construction projects in early 2009 we hoped to raise enough funding to accomplish some significant improvements to the road before the rainy season began in the summer of 2010. Last October we were blessed with a significant donation, which allowed us to start planning this project. Sarin met with village leaders, who pledged their support along with a small financial contribution from some of the larger land owners. Sarin met with a reputable contractor and negotiated for a quality job at a reasonable price.

Much of the initial work can be done with manual labor, and our plan has been to hire as many of the local villagers as possible for this work. Our purpose was two-fold. We want the villagers to be personally invested in this road project, and we want local families to benefit from labor funds. Just as we believe that the school has infused a sense of pride and hope in the village families we want the road to be another clear sign that there is hope for a brighter future, and we want every family in the village to be part of making this better future possible.

We have hired approximately 60 adults and teens from the village to help dig the drainage trenches and move the fill dirt onto the road foundation. Of course the dry season in Cambodia is brutally hot, so the villagers work in the early morning and in the evening. Many bring their lunches and, during the worst part of the day, sleep under whatever shade they can find. Sarin is paying each villager $2.50 per day which is about $.50 more than most labor jobs pay. Over the course of the month-long project we believe that over $1600 will be injected into the village economy.

Continue reading → School House Report – April 2010

We are only a month into the 2010, but it has been an eventful time for the Spitler School, and we are pleased to share the latest news.

In our last newsletter we informed you about the rice and mosquito nets which our foundation was able to provide to the village families. Thanks to the help of generous donors we were able to do an additional two distributions, thus helping to provide food supplements and protection from mosquito born disease for a large number of our students and their families. We will continue to keep supplies of rice stored at the school in case of additional emergency needs in the village.

We are very grateful to those who stepped up and donated additional funds, which were so instrumental in allowing us to provide this assistance to our students and their families following the flood that hit the village in early October.

We have maintained enough funds to do the road repairs that we told you about in our last newsletter, but the conditions have not become dry enough to begin. We are hopeful that the project will begin soon and we will be giving you an exciting report on this project in our next newsletter.

At the end of 2005, the year we began the school, Sarin invited the teachers to his modest home where he and Mary fixed them a Christmas dinner. We have encouraged him to continue this tradition, and this year we again furnished a Christmas dinner for our teachers and their families at one of the local restaurants in Siem Reap. It was also a good time to wish a happy first birthday to Sarin’s daughter, Vitee, who was born in November of 2008, only four hours after Sarin managed to get Pam and me on a flight to Saigon. As you recall this was after the Bangkok airport was taken over by protesters, playing havoc with our flight home.

In late December the Spitler School was invited to participate in a sports program being promoted by the Education Ministry as a part of their anti-drug campaign in the grade schools. The ministry is promoting sports activity and invited Spitler School to send a boy’s volleyball team to participate in a tournament in late January.

Continue reading → School House Report – February 2010

There is nothing like the Christmas season. It seems that, across the world, it is a time when caring and kindness are much more in evidence. The 470 children at the Spitler School have certainly been the beneficiaries of kindness and caring by a number of generous people in the past few weeks.

 

Our good friend Karsten, who helped us build the new 6^th grade classroom last spring, provided another generous donation, giving us the resources to purchase a large supply of rice which we have been distributing to the most needy families in the village surrounding the school. Working with the local village leaders, Sarin has identified those students and families who were in desperate need of food supplements and made sure they received bags of rice. We were also able to pass out a large supply of mosquito nets to the families in the village. When the flood receded it left standing water in unsanitary conditions and breeding grounds for the mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue fever. The children are very susceptible to dengue fever, especially if they are malnourished to begin with. Sleeping under mosquito netting increases their odds of avoiding this epidemic.

 

 

Villagers arrive for rice and netting distribution

 

Sarin and village leaders distribute rice

Sarin’s wife Mary hands out mosquito nets

 

Through the generosity of our donors we have been able to supply funds to continue to provide rice for the neediest families over the past several weeks as the village families attempt to recover from the flooding, which caused damage to the rice crops and stopped people from getting to jobs or bringing food to the village.

 

With all the emphasis on providing food and raising funds to repair the flood damaged road it has been a while since we used funds for new uniforms, but in late November funds were donated for school uniforms, and over 100 of our students received new uniforms in early December.

 

 

 

After our last newsletter informing all of you about the flooding in Siem Reap and the destruction of the roads, crops, and homes around the school, we received several offers of financial assistance including an extremely generous donation from a new friend who wishes to remain anonymous. This donation was sufficient for us to commit to the village leaders that the Spitler Foundation would help fund the road repairs, but we wanted them to get a commitment from the government for some of the funding. It appears that this will happen, and we are excited about starting the project in January, as soon as the conditions are dry enough to begin. We plan to hire many of the local village families to work on the road in exchange for rice bags and perhaps some money. It is our hope that the villagers will feel a real sense of community and pride working together to build a road into the village that will hold up during the rainy seasons.

 

Sarin
and the village leaders take measurements and make plans for a new road

 

Good reason for a new road

 

 

The benefits of the new road will be many. Tourist groups will be able to get to the school without their buses getting stuck in the mud. It will be much safer and easier for our teachers and students to travel between their homes and the school. It should help the economy of the village as it will be easier for the villagers to travel into town for their jobs, and for supplies to be delivered to the village. We also hope that the road will enable our 6^th grade graduates to attend a middle school on the bicycles that we hope to give them after they graduate next year.

 

We appreciate recent visitors to the school, Buddy and Brenda Gitlin of Boston. They sent 400 toothbrushes to the school prior to their visit, but when they arrived they went on a shopping spree and brought notebooks and mosquito nets to the school. We were also happy that our good friends from Florida, Les and Shirley Hoffman, arrived for a visit during their recent trip through Asia. Les and Shirley have traveled with Pam and me on several other adventures and have been regular donors to the school.

 

We hope these photos, in Khmer and in English, express our thankfulness and our very best wishes for a joyous holiday season and very happy and prosperous New Year.

 

 

 

 

We want to send a very special THANK YOU to those who have provided financial support to the Spitler School over the past two months since our last newsletter.

 

Thank You PV – you made the new road a reality

Karsten Schroeder – thanks for helping to feed the village

Dick and Maureen Wright – thanks for all the new uniforms

Terry Lyman – thanks for your continuing generosity

Buddy and Brenda Gitlin – thanks for enduring the mud and helping out

Elva and Terry Schoenrock – in memory of Carol Jean

Irvin Spitler

Kay Spitler

The Boulton Family

Bob & Betty Rosas

Les & Shirley Hoffman

The Sugerman Family

The DeFrain Family

 

 

Danny & Pam Spitler, Directors
Spitler School Foundation
P.O. Box 730
Peoria, AZ 85380
“Resource Providers for Cambodian School Children”
http://dannypam.smugmug.com/gallery/2466201_eEC9c

IRS EIN # 20-8085411