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I thought that Christmas Eve might be the perfect time to give you a report on the Cambodia School Project. This is because Pam and I are receiving a very special Christmas gift from a group of students from Singapore. As I am writing this letter a group of young people from the University of Singapore’s Science Club are camping out at the Spitler School while they construct a new classroom for our students.

 

 

The students are spending Dec. 21–29 working on the new classroom as well as working with the students and teachers on their English skills. The Science Club raised their own funds to purchase the materials for the building and for their travel expenses. They call their work at our school “Angel Project 8”, which we think is a very appropriate name.

 

While the university students were working at another school, during the middle of the month, they sent an advance crew to set the foundation and pour the concrete floor for the new building. It is located just to the right of the Irvin Spitler Library, which was completed in the spring.

 

 

When the Singapore students arrived they went right to work to complete the building’s walls and interiors. They also mixed concrete to pour a cement floor in one of our two existing buildings, which still have dirt floors. They also began working with the children on their English skills, and it looks like they are also teaching them some new games outside of the classroom.

 

 

 

We are looking forward to more exciting reports on this project as the volunteers will be working for several more days.

 

This is one of several projects that we have undertaken with Sarin over the past six weeks. We also authorized Sarin to use some of the school funds to construct a culvert and a dirt bridge, which will link the school building to the village and allow the children to get to school without having to wade through the water (probably polluted) that fills up the low spaces around the school during the rainy season.

 

 

As a help to the village, as well as the school, we gave Sarin the OK to hire about 30 people from the village to dig drainage trenches along 1100 meters of roadway leading into the school. The road becomes almost impassable during the rainy season. This makes life very difficult for the villagers, and it is also almost impossible to bus in the tour groups who seem to enjoy visiting the school. The trenches can also be used to help divert water to the meager crops being grown by the villagers. Of course the little bit of wages we paid to the workers provided some income for some of the poorest villagers.

 

 

 

We also provided funds to send five of our six teachers to an academy in Siem Reap where they will go to classes, part time, for three months to improve their English skills.

 

 

 

Finally, I am happy to announce that we are ready to establish the Spitler School Foundation, which will be a non-profit 501c3 charitable organization for the ongoing support of the Spitler School. For those of you who have contributed in the past, or expressed an interest in being apart of the project, your contributions can now be made out to the Spitler School Foundation.

 

Our thanks do Doug Dunipace and Lynn Olson. Doug is an attorney and Lynn is our long time CPA. Both have been generous with their time to help us through the maze of paperwork needed to establish the foundation.

 

This year we are educating 260 students. We have 50 new children in kindergarten. We have two classes of first grade with 82 students, two classes of second grade with 84 students, and we have 45 students in our new third grade class. If we continue to add 50 students each year until we reach six grades we could have over 500 students in three years. Therefore, we are exploring the possibility of replacing two of the older buildings with a brick and mortar building large enough to accommodate multiple classrooms. This will be a major building project, but with the interest and help that we have received thus far we believe that this may be a reachable goal over the next year or so.

 

We have added more photos to our website entitled “Cambodia School Project 2006. You can go to: www.dannypam.smugmug.com to view all the albums, or if you would like to go directly to the most recent photos you can use the following link. SmugMug – dannypam : Cambodia School Project 2006

 

We will have more exciting news in the near future, but Pam and I wanted to share this report with you at this time of the year, when we are again reminded of how very blessed we are to have such abundance and love in our lives.

 

We wish you all the very Merriest of Christmases.

 

Danny & Pam Spitler – Chea Sarin and family

At the end of April the children of Spitler School returned to their classes after taking a break to celebrate the most important holiday of the year. The Cambodian New Year is a time of celebration when many Cambodians travel to be with their families. It is time of many traditions including the honoring of their ancestors. It is a time to celebrate the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the rainy season.

 

Sarin suggested that we begin construction on the new 6^th grade classroom as soon as possible after the April holiday, because construction is much more difficult after it begins to rain everyday. As we mentioned in our last newsletter, we had a generous donor who provided the funds needed for this new classroom, so we are pleased to share photos of the new Karsten Schroeder Classroom.

 

 

 

 

With each new building we have been able to add certain touches that make the buildings a bit more functional but a bit more expensive as well. Our costs have increased by about 25% since finishing our last building back in 2007.

 

The children attending this year’s fifth grade class will be the beneficiaries of the new classroom starting in September, when they will become the first graduating class of the Spitler School. These students stepped in to help clean their new classroom and prepare it for use. Pam and I are hopeful that we can return to Cambodia in 2010 to attend the first graduation from Spitler School.

 

Because Karsten’s donation provided funding for the 6^th grade classroom there were just enough resources left in our general fund to get started on our second project, which is to replace the last of our original buildings from 2006. The kindergarten classroom has served the school well, but its wooden side walls and thatched roof have deteriorated to the point that it is unusable for the students when it rains.

 

 

We will be able to use the new 6^th grade classroom as a temporary class for the kindergarteners while we rebuild their classroom using a steel frame and brick construction and topped with a metal roof. Sarin is planning on beginning the project at the end of May. We are hopeful that the rains will not be too severe, and our hardworking construction crew will be able to finish this project as quickly as they completed the 6^th grade classroom.

 

While we are sad to see the last of our original classrooms go by the wayside we believe that we are maintaining the original character of the school by keeping single standing buildings, and by having the look and feel of a small village school compared to the long traditional school buildings that are seen in the cities.

 

We will be purchasing an additional 20 desks for the new classroom. These too have increased in cost and will be $40 each. In the past some donors have provided funds specifically to help purchase the desks, and we are able to recognize them by stenciling their names on the front of the desk.

 

We are trying to stay up to date on what is turning into a bad Malaria season in Cambodia. Some of our students have been stricken, and even though they can be treated for free at the children’s hospital in Siem Reap, some families have no means of transportation to get the children to the hospital. We have asked Sarin to use school funds to hire tuk-tuk drivers to transport any sick students whose families can’t get them to the hospital for treatment.

 

Even Sarin’s daughter, Vita, had to spend time in the hospital recovering from a bout of dengue fever. It was hard to imagine lively and pretty little Vita in the hospital, connected to IV’s, and fighting off this very common mosquito-born ailment. We would like to continue providing mosquito nets to the families of our students, since the Malaria mosquitoes are the most active at night when the children are sleeping.

 

 

We have arranged for the Angkor Children’s Hospital to send a team to the school in October to provide examinations for our students. We conducted a similar program in January of 2008. We are hopeful that the results of the next visit will show some overall improvement in the health of our children, who are generally healthy but suffer from a number of ailments due to the lack of nutrition and lack of sanitation.

 

We will plan our next newsletter for sometime this summer and will update all of our friends and supporters on the kindergarten construction and the end of the school year in late June.

 

We continue to be extremely grateful to those who are still able to make contributions to the Spitler School Foundation even in these very trying economic times. We’d like to acknowledge the following generous donors who have made contributions in the past two months since our last newsletter.

 

Karsten Schroeder

Rae Spitler

Kay Spitler

Jerome & Barbara Shapiro

Les & Shirley Hoffman

Elwin & Maureen Paulhus

Hubert Perry

Virginie Paessler

Lou & Claudine Hopper

 

We have recently completed posting a number of photos from our visit to Cambodia last November. These photos are available for view at the following website: www.dannypam.smugmug.com – Look for the “Featured” Album titled 2008 School Visit and Ceremony.

 

Danny & Pam Spitler, Directors
Spitler School Foundation
P.O. Box 730
Peoria, AZ 85380-0730