An Essay from Bouakham about learning English

Lao scholarship student Bouakham ( pictured) has written the essay below to help fellow students learn English...

How to learn to speak excellent English?
(Study smart Study less)

Learning foreign languages is very important and necessary these days, particularly English. Why? Because English is an international language that most people around the world use and learn as a second or a foreign language. English is not only used for communication, making new friends with different people from different countries, but it is also used for international business, education, and relevant with socio-economic development in our country. Moreover, English helps us to get better jobs, and learn new things. So, let’s learn English now.

As we see, English has four most important parts: reading, listening, writing and speaking. They are important and necessary skills which we should have in order to master English. All of them are involved in learning vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and how to use it. Yes, Speaking is one of the important parts in learning English that we have to master first. Of course, some of us still have difficulties in speaking English when we communicate with other people from different countries in real life. Let’s say, we have to think, translate into our own language, analyze the grammar first, and then we speak out in English. Do you think it is slow? Obviously, when we speak, we don’t have enough time to think and translate it. It’s different from writing because we have time and can write slowly, analyze the grammar and correct the mistakes. Sometimes we still don’t have confidence. We are afraid to make mistakes are shy. Even though I am writing this article, it doesn’t mean I am good at speaking English. My speaking isn’t fluent and excellent, but I would like to share with you some learning guides to speak excellent English. I am very happy to share these techniques with you. I also hope some of you already know them, but some may not.

Anyway, let’s learn and share ideas together whether they work or not. I got these techniques from A J Hoge, a great teacher, founder and director of Effortless English Club (San Francisco, California, USA). All of these techniques are very different and strange from the methods we use for learning English every day. These techniques mostly focus on improving English speaking and they also help us to learn grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and usage much better, faster and more effortless. There are many people who use these methods to improve their English learning, especially speaking. As a result the techniques work very well. That’s why I’d like to let you to try them. Change the ways you learn English and you will get good benefits. These techniques consist of seven rules for learning to speak English.
Here they are:


Rule 1: Always study phrases, not individual words.
Never study a single, individual word. When you find the new words, always write down the phrases they are in. A phrase helps us to remember and use it better and faster because it gives us more information of what we learn. We will understand and improve our grammar too when learning phrases.

Rule 2: Do not study grammar.
This rule is very strange, but it is very powerful and works. So, stop studying grammar because grammar gives us too much information and teaches us to think and over analyze. We learn and speak slowly. We should learn like a native speaker without grammar study.

Rule 3: Listen first.
This is one of the important rules for speaking fluent English. We have to learn with ears, not eyes. Well, it means we have to listen to understand English. We must listen to English every day if we want to speak excellent English. Listening also helps us to learn vocabulary and grammar much more automatically.

Rule 4: Slow, deep learning is best.
Well, deep learning means repeating what we learn again and again until we remember and never forget it. So we have to learn every word and phrase deeply. “Learn deeply Speak easily.” Then speaking will become automatic and easier without thinking.

Rule 5: Use point of view mini-stories.
Point of view mini-stories are the most powerful way to learn and use English grammar easily and automatically. That’s why we use mini-stories for automatic grammar study. We should learn grammar by listening to real English and listening to the same story told by different people (point of view): past, present, and future tenses.

Rule 6: Only use real English lessons and materials.
In fact, we have to learn real English if we want to understand native speakers and speak easily, fast. So use real magazines, audio articles, TV shows, movies, radio talk shows and audio books for learning English. “Learn real English not textbook English.”

Rule 7: Listen and answer, not listen and repeat.
Hey! This is the last rule and a very powerful way to speak English fast. As we know, we use listen and repeat in school, right? But this rule is to listen and answer a lot of questions. So, let’s learn to answer questions without thinking and our English becomes automatic and fast.

That’s all the seven rules for learning to speak excellent English. Remember that these techniques focus on fluent English mainly, not academic English. If we want to specialize in linguistics or academic English, we have to use different methods. If you want more information, you can find it at (www.effortlessenglishclub.com). Thanks so much!

“Good luck & enjoy your studies”

Bora writes about the Microfinance Project

In this post project manager Bora explains more about his project...

The project is operating in 6 villages surrounding JWOC, so that poor people around JWOC can get benefit from this project. The poor populations in these villages are combined of people who based here and people moved from difference places around Cambodia to find jobs and make business. Most of people in these villages make an earning from jobs such as construction workers, firm security guard and some own a small business such as small grocery store, secondhand clothes, recycling collector, sewing, food cart, and selling vegetable. The majority of our borrowers are poor people living on illegal land with an old thatch house, others rent a small house.

To retrench and expand their businesses, there is one major issue related to funding. Unfortunately, the bank system and microfinance institution in Cambodia needs a form of collateral and also literacy to fill in the application form. In addition money lenders charge a high interest rate (10-15% per month). Due to these problems, JWOC works on credit facilitation via providing small loan.
The Microfinance Project has been providing loan to small business owners (over 90% is women) since 2006 and aims to give them the opportunity to retrench and expand their existing small businesses so that they can increase the income and bring their businesses to the next level. The loan comprises of basic practical training on budgeting, bookkeeping and business planning to the borrowers, so that they can use that knowledge to make a growth in their businesses and get a comparative advantage.
Borrowers have to form a group and go through all selection processes and training sessions such as attending Info Night, Loan Application, and Business Visit. The successful applicants will participate in signing loan contract, baseline survey and attend budget and business planning training.

Besides providing loan and business training, we have Microfinance Plus activities that associated with Microfinance project works on 1) provides hygiene and filter training 2) provides free hygiene packs and option to buy a filter at a much subsidized cost according to first or second times borrowing.

From the impact assessment survey, we see the borrowers have increased income from businesses that supported by JWOC’s loan, improved of hygiene, food supplies, and savings as well as increased rate of sending children to school.
Next, I would like to update about capacity building activities as this is a key important resource for implementing the project. The Microfinance Project now has 21 volunteering students which eight of them just have joined with the team. This month is a busy month in training the new students ranging from general orientation to whole project.

I would like to say thank you to everyone that has supported the Microfinance Project.

Best wishes

Bora

Importance of well repairs

This recent New York Times article is a great explanation of why just installing wells isn't enough. Alongside installing wells JWOC teaches villagers how to repair wells and also does repair and strengthening work on existing wells, whoever first installed them.

Read the article below or go to http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/keeping-the-water-flowing-in-rural-villages/?emc=eta1 to see complete with picture and links!




December 8, 2011, 9:30 PM
Keeping the Water Flowing in Rural Villages
By TINA ROSENBERG


Keeping projects in business for the long term has been a constant theme of the Fixes column, and if sustainability has a poster child, it would be a water pump. Travel anywhere in Africa or South Asia or Central America, and you will find a landscape dotted with the rusting skeletons of dead water pumps or wells..

In most developing countries, these water points are installed with great fanfare by the government or a charitable group. They greatly improve the lives of villagers. Having a water point in or near the village means that women don’t have to spend 6,8, even 12 hours a day on perilous journeys to fetch water from rivers or lakes. The pumps allow girls to go to school instead of staying home to help their mothers fetch water or take care of siblings. They allow villagers to drink reasonably clean water instead of risking their health with every sip.

Then something breaks on the pump — a huge catastrophe like an underground pipe bursting, or a small one, like the loss of a bolt or a washer. And it never works again.

Early death is shockingly widespread for water pumps. Perhaps the biggest study of this ever was carried out in 21 African countries by an organization called Sustainable Water Services at Scale. It found that 36 percent of pumps were not working. “This level of failure represents a waste of between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion in investments in 20 years,” said the organization.

In Tanzania, mapping of water points showed that nationally, less than half the existing rural water points were working. Of water points that were less than two years old, a quarter had already stopped functioning.

Why, when communities benefit so obviously from water, do so many water points fall out of use? The short answer is that keeping the pumps running usually falls to the community or local government. But it requires specialized skills, spare parts, tools and funds. None of these are found in rural villages.

One group taking a hard look at how to solve the problem is the British-based charity WaterAid. When the organization analyzed why water points failed in Tanzania, it found something interesting: the most sustainable were those maintained by private contractors. This is not a ready-made solution; it won’t work everywhere — really poor areas won’t be able to pay. And in some regions, problems like price gouging were associated with private operators. But WaterAid felt it might be able to solve these problems. So in the north of India, it came up with an ingenious way to do just that.

Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India — it is also one of the poorest and most drought-prone. The government has been aggressively installing new water pumps, but they quickly fall into disuse. In the Mahoba district, south of the state capital of Lucknow, there are about 12,500 community water pumps, said. K.J. Rajeev, WaterAid’s general manager for the northern region of India. “But 40 percent of them are usually down, especially in summer,” he said. And when they break, they stay broken — three-quarters of the repairs take at least a month, and many are never repaired at all.

Now things are different in Mahoba. In May, Lisa Millman, WaterAid America’s director of development and communications, was visiting a town called Charkhari. She was sitting in a small storefront office, a shop lined with shelves of hand pump parts, when a cellphone rang. The call was from the village of Kotedar, where the main hand pump had broken. A master mechanic took the call and asked some questions. This was apparently going to be a big job — five mechanics piled onto two motorbikes, along with the 10-year-old son of one of the men. They reached the village 20 minutes later. As a throng of villagers watched, they took out huge wrenches. They disassembled the pump and began pulling up heavy segments of pipe. At the tenth segment they found a hole and patched it. Two and a half hours after they arrived, the pump was reassembled and working. They got on their bikes and rode off into the sunset.

Millman, who had followed in a car, had asked the 10-year-old if he wanted to be a mechanic like his dad. “He was smirking and laughing,” she said. “But after he watched his dad repair the pump, he was in awe.”

WaterAid and its local partners have set up four workshops, called Community Participation Centers, in the Mahoba district, and the project is now expanding into the neighboring state of Bihar. A call to the workshop reaches a master mechanic. He or she can choose the appropriate mechanics in the group, depending on location and skills, to send to address the problem. Each is is equipped with a cellphone, tool kit and a bike, moped or motorbike. Including mechanics-in-training and several who work part time, the centers have 27 female mechanics.

Many of the women were landless agricultural laborers before they learned hand pump repair, and many were members of the Dalit, or Untouchable, caste — the most downtrodden in Indian society. In a very traditional region, where women cover their faces and do not speak in public, it was at first hard to find women who wanted the job. Even some who completed the training didn’t want to go out to villages and work in public, said Rajeev. Now, however, wherever they go, village men accept them and women embrace them. Seeing a mechanic in yellow hardhat and sari has opened up the spectrum of possibilities for village women.

In 14 months of work, the center mechanics have repaired more than 1,100 pumps in Mahoba. Ninety-three percent of the repairs were made within 24 hours of the phone call, and only 3 percent took more than two days. A simple repair costs a village 100 rupees — roughly $2.00 — with more complex repairs costing up to $6. Water quality testing costs $1.20. The mechanics guarantee all work.

Rajeev said that the four Mahoba workshops cost WaterAid about $40,000 to set up — to train mechanics, buy parts and tools, provide bikes and cellphones and visit village councils to promote the new service. But now WaterAid is tapering off financial support to the workshops, which are all operating sustainably and on the verge of meeting their profitability goals. “We will be providing only technical assistance and hand-holding,” he said. To keep the workshops running, the mechanic keeps 70 to 90 percent of the repair fee and deposits the rest in the workshop’s account.

This isn’t the first time WaterAid tried to train mechanics in the area. In 2004, its local partner recruited men and women and trained them to do preventive maintenance and minor repairs in their own villages. It didn’t last. The trainees learned only the most basic repairs and often had to leave work incomplete. They also earned very little money. So WaterAid then decided it needed to create a real business, using high standards of training, aggressive outreach to village governments and attractive practices like guaranteed work.

Why couldn’t the market take care of this problem? There are hand pump mechanics in Mahoba, after all. But they tend to live in major market cities. Rajeev said they demanded very high fees to go out to remote villages — often too high for villages to pay. There are also information disconnects – they do no outreach to villages, so some village councils don’t know about these mechanics or how to call them.

The market also can’t finance major repairs — most villagers are too poor. The center program can work because the government has a fund that village councils can use to pay for hand pump maintenance. The fund can take 45 days to pay — too long for most traditional mechanics. Center mechanics, however, don’t mind. (Very minor repairs can usually be paid on the spot.) And now four villages have signed maintenance contracts with center workshops, paying directly from the government’s fund.

What’s happening in Mahoba is promising. But the key to this process is that the Indian government pays the bills. In the places where this problem is most serious, government is AWOL. On Wednesday I’ll look at why it has been so difficult to keep water points running, mistakes that water groups have made and what poor villages might do to keep the water flowing.

Join Fixes on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/nytimesfixes.

Clean Water Update from Sokhorn

Read below the update Project Manager Sokhorn wrote last month about progress in Brasat Char village.


I have been trying my best in working for sustainable development in the communities we work with and I am enjoying seeing the big changes happen.I am very happy to continue my working with JWOC to develop the poorest communities around Siem Reap province. In addition, I like working with JWOC team. We have a great team and we have been working in good environment. I am happy to update you about the Clean Water Project in Brasat Char village, which I have been working for more than three months but we have not finished yet.

This photo show clean water team in rainy season. My team and I went to Brasat Char village to do hygiene training for children; we tried to go to the village with the slippery and muddy road around five kilometers from the better road to Brasat Char, some of our team went on foot for a long distance. Even though we have difficulty with the road in this season we are happy and enjoying in working to develop our community.

This photo show poor hygiene with the kids in the village. His nail very dirty and it cause very bad health in the village such as getting diarrhea, dysentery, cholera and other diseases. As the solution we train the kids with basic hygiene training (hand washing and teeth cleaning), we ask them to practice in the real practical from our training.

Brasat Char Village, there are 1607 people and 332 families. If we compare to the previous villages Brasat Char is bigger and most villagers using traditional pit wells than other villages (just big hole to the ground) which make many obstacles for them. In rainy season the water flows from dirty ground into the hole, while in dry season they have to dig further into the ground to get more water. In additional, a few villagers have their own pulley wells, hole wells and pump wells in their families. From our surveys, we can see they have been lacking of hygiene knowledge. This problem can cause number of villagers getting sick in their families.
So far we have already drilled 31 new wells to provide beneficiaries use safe drinking water, and we are going to check more wells location after Pchum Ben festival. Then we are going to provide hygiene training for more children, and then it is the turn of the adults. Additionally we are going to train villagers how to use and care ceramic water filters.


Other news- Jackie the new Education Manager trained our Clean Water team how to be a good presenter for the training sessions. She was helping the team build more confidence, and to know more about the materials used in the training. We asked the team present in turn in front of their team. Once again we asked them for practicing with the louder volume because we can have a huge group to train in the village. In order to make the training successful and useful for the students Jackie and I went to the village to observe them during the training and after that we gave feedback to the team by person.

Finally, I would like to say again thank you so much for helping the Clean Water Project. I look forward to writing to you again next time to tell you more about the project.

Flood Relief Update- Phase Two

Fortunately the flood waters in Siem Reap have now more or less gone. It's amazing to look at villages that just 2 weeks ago had rivers instead of paths and see bare ground again.

The flooding is now replaced with much more manageable puddles, but problems still exsist.

Unfortunately the flood waters going isn't the end of the story. A couple of days ago ( Friday 4th November) the World Food Program appeal for food aid for victims of the flooding. With rice crops destroyed in both Cambodia and surrounding countries the cost of rice, the staple food, is increasing week on week.

Rice, the staple food of Cambodia is rapidly increasing in price.

This increase in price is going to affect the poorest hardest. Even in better years portions of rice in some households were already meager and this jump in prices will make portions smaller still.

You can read the full appeal from the World Food Program here.

As with the initial emergency response, not everyone will be able to benefit from the work of the larger agencies-there's just too many people. Using the funds donated to our appeal JWOC is able to make a commitment to help the communities around us to make sure that they aren't left out.

We will soon be recruiting a new project manager to plan and coordinate all the activities of our recovery work. The new manager will be a local person with experience in community work- someone able to identify and respond to the needs that exist.

Thank you again to everyone who donated to our appeal and made it possible for us to provide immediate and ongoing assistance.

Yukari Kane * Susan Kieswetter * Sheena Cowell * SHARE * Sandra H Snowe * Ronie Reiley * Robert Lynn * Rhonda Conry * Regina Rubeo * Rajiv Bhagat * Patricia Maloy * Pat Requa * Pamela Mueller * Noreen and Kermit Heid * Nancy Miller * Michael Werner * Mary Renton * M C Day * Leonard Novick * Kathy Hornsby * June and Robert Berliner * Janet and Allen Johnson * Jane Price * Harold Streeter * Gillian Scott * Erin Ricigliano * Erin Leider-Pariser * Deborah Forsythe * Daren Hamaker * Collette Foundation * Christpoher Colson * Chris Hurst * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Chad and Heidi Carson * Carolyn Rose * Cara McGourty * Brian Feeney * Becky Ballard * Annie Andrighetto * Allison Turner * Alex Nebesar *

Flood Relief Update-Brasat Char Village

The rain eventually stopped falling and Siem Reap Province started to dry out but this wasn't enough to make everything 'business as usual'. The road out to Brasat Char was still only passable on foot or on motorbike- neither of which are great choices for transporting over 300 ceramic water filters.

We therefore made the decision to get involved in road repairs. Working with the village chief we assembled a team of 40 adults, plus one team leader, to help get the road into a condition where a truck could pass along.

Each team member was paid with 7.5kg of rice ( funded by your wonderful donations)for their labouring. This food for work activity had three main benefits-

(1) it provided some income to families who had lost their normal rice harvesting work due to the damage done to the crops,
(2) it means JWOC can now access the village of Brasat Char to continue its Clean Water work and
(3) the road is now safer and easier for all who need to move between the villages for work, school or family.

Below you can see some pictures for the work in action-

Some of the team

Receiving the rice after the day's work.

Working hard under the cloudless sky.

The big gap that the team could only just negotiate on motorbike last week is now gone.

All this work meant that today we were able to get a truck into the village to distribute the first of the water filters.

Due to the increased areas of stagnant water in the village, left by the flooding, the number of mosquitoes has also increased but we knew from our baseline survey of Brasat Char that only 50% of families had enough mosquito nets for all family members to sleep under one. So now as part of our relief and recovery work we are distributing mosquito nets at the same time as the filters to ensure each household has at least one fully intact mosquito net to provide protection against bites and mosquito borne diseases.

Volunteer Phen hands out filters and nets after the villagers' training session.

Villagers pose with their filters and nets- both important items in improving the health of their families.

Thank you everyone who donated to the relief and recovery fund, we couldn't do this without you!

Read our latest update about our computer classes by our Lab Supervisor, Man

Computer classes at JWOC have been started since November 2010. It’s nearly one year now and it runs smoothly by Lab Supervisor. November this year, 2011, we had started three new classes in the course of typing and Microsoft Office Word. All new classes are started and worked very well and all students enjoy their course very much. They feel happy when they have opportunity to join the computer class at JWOC and they were shocked when they can touch computer for the first time. Of course, it is hard for them to practice typing for the first time because everything is new that they’ve never known before. They were trained about typing such as how to use keyboard layout, how to type and computer peripheral devices.

During Pchum Ben festival days, JWOC have had a long holidays and that was a time for staff and students to relax and mostly students of computer classes who are from other provinces went homeland to join the Pchum Ben days with their family. They were very happy with those holidays. On October 1st JWOC open the door and it was time for students to come back from their homeland and continue their lesson as usual. It seems to be fresh that everything has been released from their mind and remembered their lesson. We had played some games in the class to rememorizes the lesson.

Flood Relief Update- Clean water for Brasat Char village

Today was fortunately another mostly dry day, allowing again for water levels to drop. However, although water levels are going down there are still a vast array of problems. The one the Clean Water team had to deal with today was a lack of road...

Reaching the end of the road. A section of the mud road has been washed away.

Having access to clean drinking water is very important for preventing illness, but so far JWOC has been unable to provide our current Clean Water partner village, Brasat Char, with water filters as the road conditions have been too bad to get vehicles into the village. Due to their size and weight it is not possible to deliver the ceramic filters on foot. To make sure villagers have access to clean water while we wait for water levels to drop and road repairs to take place we are providing each household with purification tablets. Being small the tablets can be carried by motorbike to a nearby village and then taken the rest of the way on foot.

Luckily, the team are experienced drivers and motorbikes are smaller than trucks so they could make it across the gap in the road to continue to Kork Maus village after which they continued the journey on foot.

Working with our Project Manager Sokhorn the village chief arranged for people to congregate at meeting places.

Sokhorn explains how to use the purification tablets.

Volunteer Yanath went house to house to distribute to anyone not able to get to the meeting places. Here she explains to a mother how and why to use the tablets.

Volunteer Vutha distributes the packets of tablets at one of the meeting places, each packet has enough to clean 160 liters of water.

The hard working team take a break for lunch, it was to be along day.

The distribution today covered approximately two thirds of the village's 332 families. Another team will go out tomorrow to ensure all families receive the water purification tablets. The tablets are an important temporary measure, however our aim is to get water filters into the village as soon as we can. We will be assessing how to best do this over the coming week.

Thank you to everyone who has supported our Emergency Appeal to allow us to make a difference in communities affected by flooding...

Janet and Allen Johnson * Jane Price * Leonard Novick * Susan Kieswetter * Sheena Cowell * Ronie Reiley * Yukari Kane * Kathy Hornsby * Cara McGourty * Christpoher Colson * Deborah Forsythe * Carolyn Rose * Nancy Miller * Annie Andrighetto * Chad and Heidi Carson * Erin Ricigliano * Collette Foundation * Gillian Scott * Rhonda Conry * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Alex Nebesar * Regina Rubeo * SHARE * Journeys Within Boutique Hotel * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Chris Hurst * Pat Requa * Daren Hamaker * Pamela Mueller * Robert Lynn * M C Day * Patricia Maloy * Brian Feeney * Mary Renton * Becky Ballard * Erin Leider-Pariser * Sandra H Snowe * Michael Werner

Flood Relief Update- Reducing disease risk for children

Yesterday was a busy day!

The children's dry haven at JWOC was bustling with 63 coming for lunch. The team of staff and volunteers worked well together to get everyone fed and watered.

Getting set up for lunch, each child receives rice, a meat and vegetable dish plus soup and water.

Lots of children's lunches means lots of washing up; Sokha has been great in dealing with the extra work.

As well as all the activities at the dry haven, there was also distribution in Veal and Tropeang Ses villages. Here each of the 156 households received a bottle of liquid antiseptic and enough water purification tablets for 200 litres. It was a difficult mission with the villages still flooded and rain still falling.

Volunteer Sokpheak delivers the supplies to a family.

As the team distribute the items they also explain why and how to use them.

Volunteer Reaksmey wades along the 'road' to get to the next house.

Volunteer Thon talking to this father about the importance of using the provided items.

More disease reducing items going out to families that need them.

Thank you to everyone who has already donated to make this work possible.

Janet and Allen Johnson * Jane Price * Leonard Novick * Susan Kieswetter * Sheena Cowell * Ronie Reiley * Yukari Kane * Kathy Hornsby * Cara McGourty * Christpoher Colson * Deborah Forsythe * Carolyn Rose * Nancy Miller * Annie Andrighetto * Chad and Heidi Carson * Erin Ricigliano * Collette Foundation * Gillian Scott * Rhonda Conry * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Alex Nebesar * Regina Rubeo * SHARE * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Chris Hurst * Pat Requa * Daren Hamaker * Pamela Mueller * Robert Lynn * M C Day * Patricia Maloy * Brian Feeney * Mary Renton * Becky Ballard * Erin Leider-Pariser * Sandra H Snowe * Journeys Within Boutique Hotel *

Flood Relief Update- Reducing disease risk for children- Veal and Tropean Ses Villages

We are now on day 3 of our emergency response and about to start a new activity- distribution of materials in the two squatters' villages furthest from JWOC.

South Veal village.

A survey yesterday morning of the children attending the dry haven let us know that no one from either Veal or Tropean Ses villages was there. This means that so far JWOC has not been able to reduce the disease risk for the children living in those villages.

Vantha is leading on the response for Veal and Tropean Ses villages.

Vantha, our Office Manager and standing in now as Emergency Relief Team Leader, went to the villages to investigate further. This investigation confirmed that 156 households had yet to receive any help from JWOC or any other organisation. Also the dry haven provided by JWOC is just too far away for the children to attend.

In order to hep reduce the disease risk for children we will provide each of the families with enough purification tablets to make up to 400 liters of water safe to drink plus a bottle of liquid antiseptic to minimize the risk of cuts and sores becoming infected.

Each pack of purification tablets comes with clear instructions in Khmer along with pictures for those who are illiterate, the team will also explain to each household how to use them and answer any questions.

Both villages are still in a state of flooding, but as before the raised beds are remaining dry.

Despite two days with less rain, both villages are still very wet.

Veal village.

Thank you to everyone that has already donated to our Emergency Appeal, your kindness means we can get help to those that need it.

If you would like to donate, please go to this page of our website.

Thanks goes to-

Janet and Allen Johnson * Jane Price * Leonard Novick * Susan Kieswetter * Sheena Cowell * Ronie Reiley * Yukari Kane * Kathy Hornsby * Cara McGourty * Christpoher Colson * Deborah Forsythe * Carolyn Rose * Nancy Miller * Annie Andrighetto * Chad and Heidi Carson * Erin Ricigliano * Collette Foundation * Gillian Scott * Rhonda Conry * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Alex Nebesar * Regina Rubeo * SHARE Institute * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Chris Hurst * Pat Requa * Daren Hamaker * Pamela Mueller * Robert Lynn * M C Day * Patricia Maloy * Journeys Within Boutique Hotel

Flood Relief Update- Reducing disease risk for children

The first part of JWOC's relief response to the flooding in Siem Reap has been about reducing the disease risk for children in the urban communities where we work.

JWOC is fortunately staying dry amongst the floods. Keeping children out of the flood waters, where the risk of disease and injury is high will reduce their risk of contracting water borne disease.

To maximize the impact of the dry haven JWOC will also provide-

- showers, soap and towels- most have no place to wash or dry

- lunch- so children do not need to return through the flood to get lunch, and to make sure they are receiving at least one good meal a day

-clean, safe water for drinking

- basic medical treatment of bites, wounds and sores. Anything more serious will be referred to the Children’s Hospital

- a bottle of povidone-iodine, a liquid antiseptic, to take home

We are now on day two and things are going well. Below are pictures showing each of one of our activities.

Providing a dry, safe haven where children can play and study

In addition to the regular classes and activities in the library, JWOC has organised extra activities to keep the children entertained and out of the dirty flood water.

Volunteer Pat runs a basic yoga class with the children.

This morning a skipping competition proved lots of fun, with the boys out-skipping the girls!

One of the champion girl skippers!

This little boy, seen here playing football, was one we found yesterday swimming in the flood. We're so pleased Vantha persuaded him playing on dry land is better choice.

Providing a place to get clean and dry

We're providing soap, nailbrushes and showers to all children that come, plus towels to get dry with. All the children come from homes without bathrooms so this is a welcome opportunity to get clean.

To take advantage of the sun we set up temporary washing lines for the children to get their clothes dry. The children wore clothes made by the sewing class while they waited.

Providing lunch

Getting ready for lunch. Every child receives rice,stir-fried vegetable with meat and a bowl of soup.

The lunches have the double benefit of keeping children out the water and also making sure they are getting at least one good meal a day. The children need no persuading in eating up their food, every last bit is consumed.

Providing clean, safe water for drinking

The children have three designated 'water times' plus drinking water is available all day. Another NGO has provided one village with water filters but other villages are still in need of access of clean water. We will provide purification tablets this week.

Provide basic medical treatment of wounds

Every child is checked and a liquid antiseptic is applied to any cuts, sores or other wounds. With the bacteria count in the flood water so high keeping wounds as clean as possible is very important.

Staff and volunteers work together to make sure everyone is checked and treated

Provide liquid antiseptic to take home

Each family received one bottle to take home. Before they are distributed Vantha trained the older children how to use it.

A big sister lets us know she has received her bottle of povidone-iodine.

Today the weather is dry and sunny; standing in JWOC it's difficult to imagine we are in an flooding situation. However just a few hundred meters away paths and wells are underwater.

A big thank you to everyone who has helped us make a difference.

Janet and Allen Johnson * Jane Price * Leonard Novick * Susan Kieswetter * Sheena Cowell * Ronie Reiley * Yukari Kane * Kathy Hornsby * Cara McGourty * Christpoher Colson * Deborah Forsythe * Carolyn Rose * Nancy Miller * Annie Andrighetto * Chad and Heidi Carson * Erin Ricigliano * Collette Foundation * Gillian Scott * Rhonda Conry * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Alex Nebesar * Regina Rubeo * Journeys Within Boutique Hotel * Chelsea Drennan McCabe * Chris Hurst

If you would like to donate please use the widget below or go to our website.