Sustainable Cambodia Australia (SCA) is an initiative of senior Rotarians from Districts 9465 and 9455 in Western Australia. We are partnered with Sustainable Cambodia USA, headquartered in Gainesville, Florida, with SC in Pursat Town,Pursat Province, Cambodia and with the Rotary Club of Pursat Cambodia. We have been joined by other Rotary Clubs and Districts in Canada and UK.

In Australia, we are supported by Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) Project 39 and 39C donations to these two RAWCS projects are tax deductible to individuals and organisations resident in Australia.

We also count among our supporters the Inner Wheelers, our partners in Rotary, Rotaracters and many private supporters.

All non-Cambodians involved in SC/SCA, including Board members and officers in USA, are 100% volunteer, and pay their own travel and related expenses. SCA also has a project Manager in Cambodia, who is contracted from the SC management team in Pursat.

The TASK.
We currently empower rural villagers to create self-sustaining communities with clean water, wells, ponds, pumps, biosand filters, latrines, preschool buildings, school furniture, libraries, school books and teaching aids. We also provide a remote teacher allowance for preschool teachers in remote Bakan district. If you look at our 2014 report you will see some of the self-help programmes we have undertaken, which the villagers themselves have prioritised and asked for our assistance. We need more supporters so we can do more!

SCA empowers communities through the self-help principle. It is their own community project, it is for them to decide which of their objectives shall be prioritised (since we often have multiple wish lists). It is the Cambodian villagers who must shoulder the work task and it is them who must accept the inevitability of taking control of their projects and maintaining their sustainability over the long term. It is on this understanding that all self–help projects are accepted.

SC provides community training and maintenance courses by SC Cambodian supervisors, in health, education, farming, gardening, animals, fish, bees and water resources, pumps and wells, etc. for all of these projects.

GOALS and FOCUS AREAS.
The goal of SC/SCA is to meet the challenges set by Rotary International and the World Food Programme, to lessen third world problems arising from abject poverty. We as SCA offered to collaborate with Sustainable Cambodia, a Rotary-sponsored self-help organization founded in and operating from Gainesville in Florida USA.We now find ourselves teamed with a group of truly dedicated and trustworthy Partners whose sole aim is the welfare of the gentle, kind yet desperately poor rural villagers in Pursat Province, Cambodia.

We ask our readers to view the following site for background on the United Nations World Food Programme:
http://www.wfp.org/countries/cambodia

The Province of Pursat in Cambodia is singled out by the World Food Programme as one of the world’s poorest areas. The site goes on to list the statistics in, and show you the areas of Sampov Meas, Phnum Kravahn and Bakan Districts in Pursat Province. These figures will provide you with some of the worlds’ worst examples of malnutrition, underweight, stunting, and infant deaths, arising from the lack of clean water and under nourishment. These are some of the world’s poorest rural people. A high proportion of these remote rural children, are underweight and stunted. Some modest improvement has been made since 2011. We do what we can, but the problem is widespread and resources are limited but we are making a difference.

Cambodia is an Asian neighbour and by far the poorest. This nation of 14.5 million people, still suffers the trauma brought about by the slaughter of more than 20% of the nation’s educated people, and the destruction of Cambodia rural village and family life by Pol Pot. The misguided ambitions of the Khmer Rouge still live on in rural Bakan, in Pursat Province. It is here, among the last remnants of the Pol Pot minefields, where SCA is helping the local villagers and their children in so many small farming communities, to improve the quality of their daily existence and provide hope for a better future for themselves, and for their children. SCA continues to help ten communities in Bakan district.

There are two secondary/high schools supported by SC and SCA. One is in Pursat town (the Sylvia Lasky Memorial school with about 480 students) and another is in rural Kravanh (with about 500 students in the main school and 400 in outlying remote primary schools). Through RAWCS our supporters a fund ‘School life’ and ‘home life’ sponsorships for our students, and university scholarship subsidies for the best of our emerging scholars. These scholars then attend a Cambodian University with a career subject of their choosing. Since inception SC and SCA have assisted 139 students through to university in Cambodia. We are always seeking sponsors for high school support and university scholarships.

SCA high protein self–help breakfast nutrition programme is a good example of humanitarian community service. The early morning stew-soup is prepared by the villagers. As of mid-2014, ten preschool gardens will have been cultivated and the villagers will then provide the vegetables grown from seeds provided by SCA, to be fed to children at the preschool each school morning. SCA has also provided an animal pass-on programme to further supplement the protein element in the morning meal. Already we are seeing the results and parents and teachers are all reporting that their pre-schoolers and primary school children are healthier happier and brighter the numbers of children with poor BMI statistics has dropped significantly. We anticipate this figure to decrease even more as the villagers recognise the health benefits of this programme. Long term sustainability is of course in their hands.

A beneficial side effect to the nutrition programme is that the dynamic of the community is changed. As the preschool children learn social skills and the value of sharing and learning, the mothers of the village find that they are released from child-minding for some of the day and can help in the fields or take on work that can improve the family income. In July 2014 we expect to hand over control of the SCA nutrition programme and it becomes sustainable, and part of the community culture.

The pass-on animal programme is a good example of sustainability. It is designed to self propagate, spreading from village to village. As the animals bear their first progeny they are passed on to a pre-determined poor family and so on.

The long term focus of SCA, in partnership with SC, is to empower communities to spread this unique model throughout Cambodia and to ultimately help all rural Cambodians to transform their quality of life.

 

Newsletters.

Check out our recent Kangaroo Newsletters!

​

2019 News from your Roos

2020 News from your Roos

Donations.
YOU can help by making a donation to assist our rural Cambodian villagers with providing a clean water well for a village, donate an animal to start a pass-on program, or a number of other seed donations, sponsor a student or provide a university scholarship.

Donation for SCA projects is through RAWCS. (USDollars are the second currency in Cambodia)
· Project 39 - To empower rural villagers to create self-sustaining communities through projects to produce clean water, wells, ponds, pumps, bio-sand filters, latrines, preschool buildings, school furniture, libraries, school books and teaching aids.

· Project 39C is for home life or school life Student Sponsorships - each of which is 150 US Dollars each per year
· Project 39C is also for University scholarship for one of our successful students, which is 450 US Dollars per year (usually for four years)

Payment can be made by credit card or direct debit or by cheque, or Australian postal order. Click on the following RAWCS websites to make an Australian donation:
Project 39-2008-09 - https://donations.rawcs.com.au/Default.aspx?ProjectID=258&ReturnTo=4
Project 39C-2009-10 - https://donations.rawcs.com.au/Default.aspx?ProjectID=340&ReturnTo=4


Your check donation should be made out to: "RAWCS Project 39-2008-09" or "RAWCS Project 39C-2009-10".

AUSTRALIAN CONTACTS
For RAWCS Project 39 projects contact:
PDG Jennifer Scott - jennifer@scottadr.com Phone +61 414 367 631
PP Noel Hiffernan - noelah@bigpond.com Phone +61 432 683 237

For RAWCS Project 39C projects contact:
Mrs. Bette de Vries - bette.devries@bigpond.com Phone +61 400 737 929
PP Herman de Vries - herman.devries@watercorporation.com.au Phone +61 419 967 520


US EMAIL CONTACT: Susan Mastin usoffice@sustainablecambodia.org