Programs

Roteang Orphanage

TSF’s orphanage, opened in 2000, represents a new standard of hygiene, medical services, nutrition, and compassionate care for children in Cambodia. Orphans are admitted without regard for medical diagnosis (such as HIV, syphilis, or cerebral palsy) or congenital anomalies. The orphanage is home to over 70 infants and children, nearly half of whom, due to serious disabilities, will remain in the Foundation's care indefinitely. The ratio of nannies to preschool children is 1:2;serious special-needs children have their own nannies. For school-age children, the ratio is 1:3 or 1:4.

A Montessori-modeled preschool program was established onsite in 2004, and a new preschool/multi-purpose building opened in 2005. The preschool serves over 40 children six days a week, in three sessions. Painting, puzzles, music, books, games and many projects incorporate both Khmer and English. Children old enough to go to the public school have a special “preschool group” after regular school at their own request as they love the activities.

The English Language School

Roteang’s young people recognize that learning English will help them move from their parents’ lives of subsistence farming and fishing to jobs in the tourism or word processing industries. The Foundation sponsors 19 daily English classes, attended voluntarily by about 450 children after regular school hours at the Roteang Village School, five days a week, year-round. Taught by carefully selected bilingual Cambodians, for whom we also provide ongoing English language instruction and teacher training, the students are so eager to learn English that many have formed study groups that meet early on weekend mornings.

Roteang Village School

The Sharing Foundation provides general support for more than 700 children who attend the Roteang Village public school by donating supplies and uniforms for needy students. Even the six dollar cost of two uniforms a year can prevent a child from attending school. The Foundation also built a new playground, as well as new classrooms and a library in 2004. The library, with over 400 colorful books, is among the first in Cambodia’s public schools.

High School and College Sponsorships

In 2004, the Foundation created a high school sponsorship program. Donors make high school attendance with quality small group instruction possible for nearly 60 needy students.

In 2005, TSF made it possible for the first ten students from Roteang Village to attend colleges in Phnom Penh. Previously sponsored in high school, these students were able to pass the National High School Graduation exams. Eighteen other high school graduates with four or more years of instruction in TSF’s English school have now joined the original group. TSF has rented two safe "dormitories" in the city, and provides tuition, room, board, furnishings, books, bicycles, and uniforms. The Foundation sponsors all of the students for ongoing English language instruction at the Australia Center for Education [ACE], albeit with some scholarship help from ACE itself. Elephant and Head English teacher, Mam Sary, oversee the sponsored college students and meet with them weekly.

Owens House

The Owens’ family house is a guest home and education center for pregnant, HIV-infected women who come in from the countryside to deliver their infants at Calmette Hospital, in a program mentored by Maryknoll. The house was rehabbed and is funded through The Sharing Foundation by the family of Martha Ives Owens, who with her husband, Bob, and two daughters, perished in the Lockerbie disaster. The pregnant women stay at Owens House and attend classes about HIV, infant care, and clean water preparation for bottle-feeding, prior to delivery. They receive antiretrovirals before delivery, and their infants receive niviripine right after birth, which cuts the transmission on HIV from the mother to child from about 25 percent to between two and five percent. After the birth, the mothers return to Owens House for variable periods. When they go home, they receive a TSF basket with formula, baby clothes, blankets, and cleaning essentials. All babies and mothers are scheduled for follow up in a Maryknoll program.

The Sewing School

A four-month course, enrolling two new female students every two months, teaches young women a skill that enables them to support their families substantially better than they can by farming. The selected students are paid from their first day in sewing school. They start by making white school uniform shirts, which with blue pants or skirts, are put together in “school uniform packets” and delivered to poor schools that need them, or to SCAD (Street Children's Assistance and Development), which works to get street children into school.

The Sewing School is a win/win program, as the students learn a trade that can get them a well-paying supervisory job in the garment industry, and TSF can donate 1,400+ uniforms yearly to kids who might otherwise not be able to go to school. Sewing students, as they develop more skills, make the tote bags, back packs, and purses which are brought to the USA and sold by volunteers at church fairs and the like, thus making the sewing school self-sustaining. A few graduates choose to stay on in the sewing school shop, earning substantial money by piecework.

The Computer School

Opened in 2006, the school offers computer classes every morning utilizing ten donated laptops and a few older desk tops. Students are picked by lottery and attend daily for six weeks to learn word processing and spread sheets, and see a bit of the internet on our one slow connection. After all the lottery groups go through, the group rotation starts again. Computer classes are very popular, and these skills are a real help as students look towards future employment.

The Farm Project

The poorest families of Roteang Village are served by the Farm Project. The Foundation leases ten acres and provides seeds, tools, and irrigation equipment to indigent farmers who then grow their own vegetables. The surplus is sold, providing families with home improvement credits that can be exchanged for roofs, toilets, and water collection tanks.
TSF also built and funds the Khmer Literacy School (Head Start) on the farmland for the nearly 150 children of these illiterate farmers, many of whom are now able to advance to the village public school, which requires basic literacy upon entry.

Safe Water Projects
Water supplies in the Phnom Penh region are frequently contaminated by arsenic, parasites, and bacteria. To supply pure drinking water, the Foundation has donated numerous filtered rainwater collection systems in Roteang Village and at multiple schools in the area along the Mekong River.

Kampong Speu Orphanage

TSF continues to pay monthly for fuel (both propane for the kitchen and diesel for the generator) at Kampong Speu, a poor government orphanage one hour west of Phnom Penh. Most of the 70 students here are school age, but a few are toddlers. We also support their two nannies entirely. In addition, for the last several years we have provided all their school uniforms, and assisted their dance program with costumes as needed, as well as other periodic help. In 1999, we rehabbed their schoolroom and the girls’ dorm, and in 2001, we built a full kitchen/dining room, bringing their eating facility indoors from around a wood fire in a wooden cowshed. Last year, an extension was added to their dining area. This year, at the orphanage Director’s request, a volunteer TSF team immunized all of their children for Hep B and DPT/Tetanus.

Other projects:

All of the children of Roteang Village have been immunized, full series, by TSF, in a project organized by Elephant and our orphanage doctor. Volunteer Cambodian medical students helped administer over 7,000 individual shots, for Hepatitis B, and for Tetanus or DPT. College students get typhoid immunization as well.

Multiple families with seriously handicapped children are supplied with rice, dried fish, oil, and soy sauce monthly at their homes, so that the mothers can stay home and care for these children, instead of considering abandonment.

In the summer of 2007, TSF enlisted local students to work with the Foundation to fill a huge stagnant water trench. Extra dirt arranged by Elephant finished the project. It turned out to be a serious summer for Dengue Fever, and this preventive action was extremely timely.

A new, ongoing dental program for fillings and preventive care was instituted for the orphanage children in 2007.

The 750 children of Beng Krom School, a very poor school on the far side of the Mekong, will receive all needed uniforms and school supplies again in 2007. We have also put in one of five recently built pure rainwater collection systems at this school, and latrines will be in place soon.