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“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