Banteay Sleak and Ptesh Leu Teak Slum Communities

During our recent visit to Cambodia, we paid a visit to the very poor slum community of Banteay Sleak, where we fund a weekly clinic operated by our partner organisation One-2-One Cambodia for 250 families.

This was our second visit and there have been huge improvements to the health of the children and adults since I was here in March. We were then taken to an even poorer community the "Village above water".

Words and pictures cannot adequately describe the living conditions which this community have to endure. The black foetid water runs right under their houses and the smell is the worse we have encountered in 30 years of travelling throughout Asia! We are currently assessing the community of 180 families and will be starting a weekly medical clinic here as well, next month.

Final Places for the 2013 Brighton Marathon

CamKids has been offered some additional places for the 2013 Brighton Marathon. Public places have already sold out and very few charity places are still available. The event will take place on Sunday 14th April 2013.

The minimum sponsorship amount is £500 per runner and we already have a number of runners signed up for the event. As an example of how far this money will go, £500 will pay for the running costs of one of our rural schools for a year.

Participants will receive a CamKids T-shirt, Running Vest and Charity Wristbands and we will help you set up a fundraising page on JustGiving, to make collecting sponsorship money easy.

There are a limited number of places and we have a short deadline to confirm the places with the organisers. If you are interested, please email: events@camkids.org by Sunday 30 September.

Gateways School supports CamKids

Gateways School near Leeds (@gatewaysschool) recently held a Hawaiian Luau Dance Benefit in aid of CamKids and the evening raised over £800 for the charity. The event, which was organised by a group of Year 9 pupils, included dance and music performances by girls from Year 4 upwards and also encouraged audience participation in a hula hooping competition and other games. The whole year group had been very busy in the art department making a cocktail shack and various other colourful Hawaiian-themed decorations, including surfboards, turtles, flip-flop garlands, flowers, etc. During the interval, parents and other guests enjoyed tropical cocktails and Hawaiian-themed snacks in the school grounds as the evening sun added to the holiday atmosphere.

The Luau was the latest in a succession of fundraising activities which have raised a total of over £4,400 for CamKids over the course of the last school year. The whole school has been involved in these fundraising activities ranging from cake sales to a Million Pound Drop Gameshow, from younger pupils setting up their own enterprises selling Christmas-themed products to Zumba classes and non-uniform days. A member of staff ran a marathon to raise funds and a Year 7 pupil walked the Three Peaks, as well as asking her birthday party guests to forgo the usual party bags so that she could donate the money to CamKids instead.

The school chose CamKids as their charity of the year to coincide with an expedition to Cambodia which older pupils completed in July. Throughout the year the work of CamKids was highlighted in school assemblies to enable pupils to better understand the support the charity gives to children in Cambodia.

The Trustees of CamKids would like to send a huge Thank You, on behalf of all of the Cambodian children who benefit from our projects, to all of the children, staff and parents of Gateways School for their wonderful fundraising efforts throughout the year. You have made a difference to so many lives through your generosity and hard work.

EYC Lakeside School

The Lakeside School is a house that has been converted to a school / community centre which brings education and health programs to children and young people in a slum district in Phnom Penh.

Run by Empowering Youth in Cambodia and funded fully by CamKids, the results of this program are clearly having a positive effective on the young people's future prospects and are a daily source of joy. The kids really enjoy going to class and students are regularly rewarded with fun activities. Outside of school, living conditions are tough, with families living in run-down shanty houses where drinking and gambling lead to children being neglected, while inside the school they are cheerful and the staff and volunteers provide positive influences.

Lakeside's programs include free English lessons, medical &, dental, access to the new library, community organising, as well as weekend activities including leadership development, dancing, yoga, and various field trips.

Lakeside School has 120 students attending every day and has an excellent network of supporting partners, including CamKids donors, committed Cambodian staff, international and local volunteers and a student team leader group which volunteers and runs much of the operation of the school.

CamKids Summer 2012 Newsletter

In the West we often take for granted our opportunities to play and get involved in sport. Sport has universal appeal and anywhere you throw a ball, you will soon find children playing with it. Cambodians love sport, but the opportunities for many children are extremely limited, especially the opportunity to take part in some sort of organized competition.

The benefits of sport are of course well documented and wide reaching, ranging from physical development and the endorphins produced through exercise, to life skills of dealing with success and failure, teamwork and communication.

Sport fits neatly into our MEND (Medical, Education, Nutrition, Development) Initiative, under the Development banner and most of this Newsletter is dedicated to showing how many children are benefitting from "Sport & Fitness With CamKids".

To access the Newsletter, please click Here or Contact Us and we will send you a copy by e-mail. If you sign up to our Newsletter below, you will receive future copies by e-mail every 6 months (your details will not be used for commercial or any other purpose).

Thank you once again to all of our donors and supporters, without whom none of this would have been possible. If you would like to find out how to support our work, please Contact Us.

The CamKids Trustees

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Thames Path Challenge - Places still available

Places are still available for the Thames Path Challenge on 29/30th September, which starts close to Putney Bridge and follows the unique Thames Path National Trail. Take on the epic endurance walk against the clock on the 100km route to Henley and attempt to complete the challenge within 24hrs – or take on the 50km option with a target time of under 12hrs.

Be part of the challenge which will see hundreds of walkers attempt the course and fundraise for CamKids and other charities. Sign up in teams of friends, colleagues or join as an individual and meet fellow trekkers along the way. It will be a weekend to remember!

Challenge Details:

• The ultimate 100km challenge - target time under 24hrs!
• 50km daylight challenge - target of 12hrs!
• Assemble your own team - tackle the course together
• Join as an individual - and we'll support you all the way!
• Replenishment checkpoints along the way
• Hot food stops @ 50km, 75km, and 100km
• Fully supported with pace walkers, medics, physios
• Participant area with training and fundraising resource
• 50km walk - £50 registration fee + £200 minimum sponsorship
• 100km walk - £75 to register + £300 minimum sponsorship

Full details of the challenge can be found HERE or email us for more information.

If you would like to take up the challenge and raise money for CamKids, please follow THIS LINK. Collecting your sponsorship money is easy, by setting up your own JustGiving Page HERE.

Krousar Thmey Centres for Deaf and Blind Children

Children the world over are gorgeous - and none more so than the deaf and blind children of Krousar Thmey. There are 16 Krousar Thmey Centers throughout Cambodia. The One-2-One / CamKids mobile dental team visits these underserved centres to provide much needed dental treatment to the children, most of whom have never seen a dentist. For some, even brushing their teeth is a new experience.

On our most recent visit to the Krousar Thmey School in Battambang Province, our team was most warmly welcomed by the staff and children. Shyness soon gave way to curiosity and excited chatter as they flashed huge smiles, crowded around, and were eager to help in what ever way they could.

Over the course of 5 days, the dental team, composed of overseas dental volunteers and local dental professionals, checked many and treated 196 Krousar Thmey children, completing over 300 fillings and pulling out over 100 rotten painful teeth! They also placed many fissure sealants and fluoride varnish, to help protect the teeth against further decay. Although the conditions were challenging, with temperatures well over 30 degrees, with so many children needing help, our team stepped up to the task, without complaint. The children were fantastic - sometimes waiting a long time for treatment, and very brave in the face of having several teeth treated at a single visit. Our team kept the children happy with big smiles and small rewards at the end - receiving a new toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste in Cambodia is a big deal! The children were hugely grateful to our team, and most were happy to come back for a second and even a third visit.

It is not easy being a blind or a deaf child in Cambodia. Many are abandoned by their parents. The volunteers were constantly blown away by the children's courage, their resilience, and their gratefulness for the simple things most people in the western world take completely for granted. Despite some of the difficulties in communicating (how do you prepare someone who can't see or hear for an injection?), every day the children won the hearts of the volunteers through their acceptance, friendliness and courage. They even helped our volunteers learn some sign language and songs. Teaching children how to brush their teeth with their very first toothbrush was a rewarding experience - broad foamy smiles on their faces, laughter from their friends at their efforts, and seeing the obvious pride and gratefulness they all had at being given their very first toothbrush.

The deaf and blind children of Krousar Thmey School in Battambang City did not have any material things that they could give the dental team to thank them for their help, but they gave what they could, by putting on a special "Thank you" concert. Those who could sing, sang; those who could perform magic tricks wowed the audience with their magical prowess; and those with acrobatic skills said thanks by performing acrobatic tricks - leaving the dental team feeling like, in the end, they were the ones who had the most to be thankful for.

For more information or to support this project, please Email Us.

SEAL Cambodia Launch

The Seal Cambodia project was formally launched on 6 July 2012 at a special event in Phnom Penh by Professor Raman Bedi (Chairman, Global Child Dental Fund and King’s College London), the project’s national coordinator Dr Callum Durward (Director, One-2-One Cambodia) and The Cambodian Children’s Charity – CamKids. The three year project will provide preventive care to 60,000 young children and will involve a large consortium of dental providers throughout the country. Professor Bedi said “We are excited about the programme which has brought together the Cambodian dental profession, international and local NGO’s, and the Ministries of Health and Education. Working together this project will transform the dental health of these children.”

With the approval and support of the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MOEYS), local dental groups are working with the Global Child Dental Fund (GCDFund) and The Cambodian Children’s Charity – CamKids to introduce the SEAL CAMBODIA project. These local groups include the Oral Health Office of the MOH, the Faculties of Dentistry, the Dental Nurses School, two local NGOs (One-2-One Cambodia and Cambodia World Family), the Cambodian Dental Association, and the School Health Department of the MOEYS.

Over the past 3 years, the MOEYS together with the MOH, with support from Colgate, have conducted a dental preventive program in 115 Phnom Penh primary schools. The program has consisted of dental health education and tooth brushing in schools. The outcome has been positive, however the level of dental decay in children is still extremely high. The present project will add fissure sealants to the existing school preventive program. The sealants will be applied to 6-7 year old children by dentists, dental nurses and dental students on-site at primary schools. A dental company (GC Asia) has donated enough material to be able to seal the teeth of 60,000 children over 3 years. The GCDFund and The Cambodian Children’s Charity – CamKids, have also provided the necessary financial support. Initially the program will be carried out in Phnom Penh and Kampong Cham. This type of program (which has been carried out in other countries) will be hugely beneficial to Cambodian children, and will prevent the extraction of many thousands of permanent teeth.

To launch the SEAL CAMBODIA project, a workshop (sponsored by GC Asia) was held at the Goldiana Hotel on Saturday 8 July. In attendance were representatives from the organizations supporting the Seal Cambodia project (including the Executive Director of the Global Child Dental Fund – Professor Raman Bedi), distinguished overseas lecturers from Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and the UK, international delegates, as well as local dentists working for the MOH, MOEYS, the Dental Nurses School (in Kampong Cham), the two dental schools, hospitals and health centres, and local NGOs. On Monday 10 July a demonstration of the SEAL CAMBODIA project was held at Norodom Primary School.

2013 Brighton Marathon

Following on from the successful 2012 Brighton Marathon, we have been offered places for the 2013 event, which will also be televised for the first time.

This year we had 11 CamKids runners who raised almost £10,000 for the charity - a fantastic result. Next year's event will take place on Sunday 14th April 2013 and we are aiming for even more runners.

The minimum sponsorship amount is £500 per runner and we already have a number of people signed up for the event. As an example of how far this money will go, £500 will pay for the running costs of one of our rural schools for a year.

Participants will receive a CamKids T-shirt, Running Vest and Charity Wristbands and will have help in setting up a fundraising page on JustGiving, to make collecting sponsorship money easy.

We have a very short deadline to confirm the places with the organisers. If you are interested, please email: events@camkids.org as soon as possible to confirm your place or express your interest, if you are not sure.

Great North Run 2012

The Bupa Great North Run, the world's biggest half marathon, has now grown to an unmissable experience for over 54,000 runners each year. The course takes in the iconic Tyne Bridge and finishes in the coastal town of South Shields. This year's event takes place on 16th September.

Live music, on course refreshment and thousands of cheering supporters will keep you motivated every step of the way. Many world class athletes have taken on the challenge including local international and winner of the very first race, Mike McLeod as well as some of the most famous names in distance running; Paula Radcliffe and Haile Gebrselassie.

If you are taking part in the event and would like to raise money for CamKids, you can sign up to our special Virgin Money Giving Page for the event or email us for more information.

CamKids / qb Football Tournament 2012

Under the blisteringly hot Phnom Penh skies, Cambodia showed the world on Sunday June 10th, how a football tournament should be run. The first annual CamKids/qb Football Tournament was held at the Old Olympic Stadium, and alongside some impressive footballing talent, the day was marked by irrepressible excitement, good humour and happiness.

On the day there was a total of six teams battling it out for glory. Teams from various provinces, Who Will Kompong Chnang, Empowering Youth in Cambodia (EYC) Phnom Penh, New Futures Organisation (NFO) Takeo, Hopeful Association for the Poor (HAP) Kompong Speu, were four of the teams and are all organizations supported by CamKids.

CamKids also invited PPSL, a team of ex pats and Cambodians who train and play every Saturday in Phnom Penh, and another well trained team, comprising of children from 6 different orphanages, represented qb on the day. Some of the players had never been to Phnom Penh before. Some of the players had never worn football boots before. But you wouldn’t have known, from the enthusiasm and spirit, how new this was for many of them.

The stadium looked wonderful, thanks to sponsors qb, the mobile phone company, who had printed hoardings to go around the pitch, adding to the air of professionalism that surrounded the event. Indeed, from a neutral, outsider’s perspective, the professionalism that permeated every facet of the tournament was incredibly impressive, not least because, as is always the case with a CamKids project, no one was being paid.

So it wasn’t just the hoardings, or the wonderful vivid team kits, also thanks to qb, that made the whole event seem so significant, but it was the labours of so many people that made the day such a delight. The referees and linesmen toiled in the thankless heat, the staff from The Eighty8 barbecued satay and cooked noodle salad for over three hundred players and spectators. But so much of the unsung work was done, as ever, by Dom and Benita, who organised every aspect of the day, from arranging sun hats and cold drinks, to Dom’s inspired commentary – the day would have run far less smoothly without their huge efforts.

On the pitch, the teams were surprisingly evenly matched, despite the disparity in experience, and in player size. The new kits looked magnificent, and the pride of the players in wearing them would have brought a lump to the throat of the most cynical football fan.

The Who Will team looked lively and guileful, but in the end NFO won the day, due in no small part to the enthusiasm of their coaching team. Even underdogs HAP acquitted themselves well, defending doggedly and attacking on the break like seasoned pros. The crowd was spirited, enthusiastic and very vocal, and, unlike other tournaments currently going on in Europe, there were no reports of hooliganism. Everyone was just thrilled to be there.

There has to be a winner, and in the end, a tense, hard fought final was won 2-0 by NFO over qb. 3rd and 4th was battled out between Who Will and PPSL, with Who Will the somewhat unexpected victors with another 2-0 scoreline. EYC took 5th over HAP, but only lost one game on the day and had the player of the tournament in their team, who has already had a mural dedicated to him on the wall where they train. HAP, although coming 6th on the day, had never played together before and the story of this team will definitely be the subject of a follow up article.

The point of the day was a simple one: for everyone to have fun, and there’s no doubt that they did. CamKids paid transport costs, not only to bring in the teams from each organisation, but a 50 strong crew, so all the children and carers from the centers could attend. This allowed a great day out for everyone and gave each team a support base and the whole event an amazing, positive and joyous atmosphere. The looks on the faces of the players as they got their medals at the end of the day, and were told they could keep their kit, was worth all the hard work and effort. It’s humbling to stop for a moment and see how the kids respond to something we’re so used to in the developed world, and it was humbling to watch the care and effort put in by everybody involved on Sunday. It was a terrific day, and one everyone should be thoroughly proud of. Roll on next year.

THAMES PATH CHALLENGE: Saturday 29 - Sunday 30 September 2012

2012 is an Olympic year for London, and we've an Olympic challenge for all. Starting close to Putney Bridge the Thames Path Challenge is an epic endurance walk against the clock following the unique Thames Path National Trail. Take on the ultimate Thames Path Challenge 100km route to Henley and attempt to complete the challenge within 24hrs – or take on the 50km option with a target time of under 12hrs.

Be part of the challenge which will see hundreds of walkers attempt the course and fundraise for CamKids and other charities. Sign up in teams of friends, colleagues or join as an individual and meet fellow trekkers along the way. It will be a weekend to remember!

Challenge Details:

• The ultimate 100km challenge - target time under 24hrs!
• 50km daylight challenge - target of 12hrs!
• Assemble your own team - tackle the course together
• Join as an individual - and we'll support you all the way!
• Replenishment checkpoints along the way
• Hot food stops @ 50km, 75km, and 100km
• Fully supported with pace walkers, medics, physios
• Participant area with training and fundraising resource
• 50km walk - £50 registration fee + £200 minimum sponsorship
• 100km walk - £75 to register + £300 minimum sponsorship

Full details of the challenge can be found HERE or email us for more information.

Registration is open until 31 July 2012 - plenty of time to don your trail shoes, plan your training, and start fundraising. If you would like to take up the challenge and raise money for CamKids, please follow THIS LINK. Collecting your sponsorship money is easy, by setting up your own JustGiving Page HERE.

Fundraising For CamKids

These days, raising money for charity doesn't need to involve rattling a can or trawling round your friends asking them for the £5 they promised you months ago. With online fundraising services, you only need to email, Tweet or post the details of your own personal fundraising site on Facebook and the rest is taken care of. These services charge a small fee, but they also reclaim the 28% in Gift Aid for us, which means that, in most cases, we receive around 120% of the amount donated (for UK taxpayers) and involves very little administration work for us.

CamKids has signed up to the popular JustGiving service, as well as Virgin Money Giving, BT's MyDonate and other popular services, where you can also make single or regular donations.

Our JustGiving Page will give you some ideas of possible events. In the past, CamKids supporters from all around the world have set up pages for the following events:

Marathons

Kick Boxing Event

Bug Eating Competition

Birthdays

Weddings

In Memory

Paragliding

Skydiving

Kilimanjaro Climbs

Ultramarathon

Beard Shaving

Cycling across the USA

Fun Runs

Some people also set up fundraising pages before or after a trip to Cambodia, to let their friends know what they are doing, how they have been affected by the country and how they can help the children. If you are thinking of travelling to Cambodia, we can agree on a specific project or programme which you money will fund, so that you can report back to your supporters on how the funds were spent. Remember, CamKids have absolutely no administration or overhead costs and so we can guarantee that 100% of the money you raise will go directly to helping the Cambodian children.

How about you - why not set up a fundraising page today? A few pounds from all of your friends could make a huge difference to the lives of the children who benefit from our programs. £1 will pay for the dental treatment for a child in a rural village, who would not have access to such treatment and can relive them from the pain of tooth decay and infection. If you can raise £450, this will allow us to run a rural school in Takeo for a year.

JustGiving: www.justgiving.com/tccc

Virgin Giving: www.virginmoneygiving.com/charities/camkids

MyDonate: www.mydonate.bt.com/charities/camkids

If you need any assistance, or would like some other fundraising target ideas, please email us.

Chbar Chros School Blessing

On 22 March, our new Community School at Chbar Chros, in Kampong Speu Province was officially opened and blessed by monks from the local monastery. This project is part of our MEND (Medical, Education, Nutrition, Development) initiative for the area and will shortly be followed by a pre-school facility and a medical centre. It was a truly memorable day for everyone concerned. We were treated to a series of dances performed by the talented children at HAP orphanage in the beautiful costumes which CamKids' donors funded, as well as 2 songs, specially composed by the children and their teacher in honour of the new school and CamKids and a number of speeches written by the children, the teacher and the elders of the village.

It was a wonderful day and we were delighted to be able to welcome our Patron, Al Murray, as well as Mark Augustyn and Adam Booker, who work tirelessly in supporting Al to raise large amounts of money for CamKids throughout the year. We were also really happy to be able to bring along a bus load of Cambodian and expatriate CamKids supporters from Phnom Penh. Enforcing the 'no drinking before the ceremony' rule on the bus was challenging, but the day went off without any hitches and Dom managed to keep everyone under control. The same cannot be said for the return journey!

On our way to the ceremony, we dropped in on a local government school, where teachers and pupils of Sorell school in Tasmania had raised money to purchase playground equipment for the school. Again, it was wonderful to be able to have long time CamKids supporter, Moya Sharpe, there for the ceremony, where we also donated 40Kg of children's clothes, organised by Gill Fryer in Victoria.

We were all very moved by the reception we received at both schools, the speeches from the local chiefs and elders of the community, the dancing and the songs sung by the children. At last the villagers at Chbar Chros have a school for their children - something that they have never had in this area, even before the Khmer Rouge took over in the mid-1970's. The look of pride on the faces of the elders of the village were all that was needed to assure us that they will continue to work in partnership with CamKids to make the school a success.

Banteay Sleak Community Medical Clinic

This clinic is a partnership between CamKids (which funds all of the costs), One-2-One (which provides the services) and the Community to improve the health status of the poor in this slum and to improve the general standard of health of the poor in this area. Moreover, it seeks active participation of the community, so that it can educate inform and empower the community to understand basic health issues and basic hygiene. CamKids and One-2-One established a similar clinic at Canalside over a year ago and the improvements in the health of the children and adults at that site has been extraordinary.

Banteay Sleak Community Clinic is set up on the road of 434 in the Chamkar Morn district of Phnom Penh. This slum community has 288 families from various locations around Cambodia. Most of people in this village have not had any education about health matters and most of them have no chance to go to school. Hygiene is extremely poor - the community doesn’t have enough lavatories because they don’t have enough money or any land to build them and only 20 to 30 families who can afford to use electricity. They live in a very poor condition with poor hygiene, contaminated spoiled food and no clean water. Most pregnant women don’t have antenatal care and give birth at home because they are so poor and don’t know where to go to check up on their health. Most of the adults work in labouring / construction or rubbish collection and recycling. Their daily income is $1.5 to 2.5 dollars per day £30-45 per month), to look after and feed their whole family.

Two teams carry out the Medical work – a medical and a nursing team. The medical clinic is divided into three stations - Triage station, Consultation station and Pharmacy station. Each station has its own tasks. The Triage station is the place for patient registration, measuring (weight, blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate) and finding out the main problems. At the Consultation station, the medical doctor or senior medical student starts to find and record the important facts such as history of presenting illness (HPI), Past Medical History (PMH), Medication , Allergy, Family History (FH), Social History(SH), Review of System(ROS), Physical Examination(PE), Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment. The Pharmacy station is responsible for providing the medication and instructions on how to take the prescribed medication, so that we can be sure that patient understand and can follow the advice.

The nursing team provides health education and much needed public health measures to the villagers and children. Managing many, many wounds which is a major part of life in the slum, when dwellers are working in bare foot. Injury and trauma is an every day life event as they are working in high risk area like construction sites and picking up and recycling rubbish.

Banteay Sleak Community Clinic started in April 2012. We see a lot of children and adults with many illnesses and wounds, along with skin problems like scabies and lice. Our team will continue to look for locations to set up the clinic so that when the rainy season comes, we will be able to continue our work. We are planning a MOBILE dental service for this community, to start on the 9th May. Once the clinic has been established for a few months, we intend to implement another program here, run as a partnership between One-2-One and CamKids, called Cambodia Smiles, so that mothers of young children under the age of 5 are targeted for special oral health education and training to improve oral health of the children as they grow.

Chbar Chros Community school

Work is progressing well on the new school at Chbar Chros and remains on schedule for the planned official opening later this month.

The school will provide Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 education for an estimated 100 children who do not have regular access to education at the moment. It will be run as a Community School in accordance with the guidelines of the Ministry of Education.  CamKids has funded the cost of construction and will cover all of the running costs. In addition, CamKids is currently renovating a kindergarten, which will be opened for the nearby community of Raing Te at about the same time (pictures to follow).

It is planned to expand the use of the school building in Chbar Chros to offer opportunities to a larger number of people in the surrounding villages. CamKids has also secured funding and started to construct a medical centre on the site this month and also sent a mobile medical and dental team to this community in January, which was extremely successful. We are particularly encouraged by the fact that the villagers and their leaders see this as a collaborative project, which bodes well for the future.

The land for the buildings has been donated by the community and part of the preparatory work is being undertaken in association with local villagers, who are giving their time freely. Additional projects are planned for this community, to further improve the health, education and life chances for the whole community and we hope to use the knowledge and experience gained from this project to undertake similar projects at other poor rural communities in Cambodia.

STOP PRESS:  The official blessing of the school took place on 22 March 2012 and an update will be posted shortly.

CamKids 2011 Annual Report & Accounts

The Trustees of CamKids - The Cambodian Children's Charity, are pleased to report that the Charity's Annual Report and Accounts for 2011 have been filed with the Charity Commission well ahead of schedule.

A copy of the report and accounts can be downloaded from HERE.

Please direct any questions about these accounts to CamKids Finance

From Vision 2 Voice Concert in Aid of CamKids

From Vision 2 Voice and Special Guests are delighted to present a concert in aid of CamKids:

• DATE: Saturday 10th March 2012
• VENUE: Bedgrove Infant School, Ingram Ave, Bedgrove, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP21 9DJ
• TIME: 7.00pm start. Finish by 9.30pm
• DRESS CODE: Smart Casual
• TICKETS: £20 each cash (£10 for 5 to 15 year olds, children under 5 free)

The concert will be compered by Jamie Hinde – Royal Shakespeare Company actor and West End Lead. It will be 2.5 hours of song and dance (with interval) featuring Rickmansworth Adult Choir, The Academy Choir and Soloists, Konflict dance troupe which can be seen on the hit TV show ‘Got To Dance’, David Mitchener’s Children’s Choir and a surprise special guest too.

To book your seat please email Megan on megan@megantanner.net or call 07957 787399.

CamKids' Partnership with GCDF

At the end of 2011, the Charity entered into an agreement with The Global Child Dental Fund (GCDF), the world’s leading global dental charity for children, to work together on a number of projects in Cambodia. Our first programme with GCDF will be SEAL CAMBODIA, which was launched in January 2012 and co-funded by CamKids and GCDF. We have partnered to provide 60,000 children with dental sealants over the next three years. The treatment will initially be targeting 6-7 year olds, but could be extended after the initial programme to over 100,000 children.

Sealing provides each child with a greater protection against dental caries and oral pain in the long run because the sealant helps to strengthen teeth in children when they are at their most susceptible to decay. Studies show a 2/3 reduction in decay in children who have had their teeth sealed.

Each of the following SEAL CAMBODIA delivery partners will carry out this dental sealing, together treating a total of 20,000 children each year:

• One-2-One Cambodia
• The Cambodian Ministry of Health
• Faculty of Odonto-Stomatology, University of Health Sciences
• Faculty of Dentistry, International University
• The Cambodian Dental Association
• Cambodia World Family (CWF)

This is expensive work that requires supplies and logistics. We have wonderful and committed help from many Cambodian volunteers, as well as visiting interns from abroad, but we still need funds to continue providing treatment for each of the children. £1 Sponsors one child for a year on the sealant programme - why not support the treatment of 10 children, or get your friends or work colleagues to chip in to treat 100!

If you would like to make a donation to help fund this project, please go to: www.bit.ly/singdonate or www.bit.ly/regdonate if you would like to make a regular donation. Please enter "SEAL", in the Project field. Alternatively, please email medical@camkids.org for more information.

You can raise money for CamKids (at no cost you) every time you shop online with 100's of brands including Play.com, John Lewis, Amazon and Dixons. If you sign up by 31st March 2012, Give as you Live will donate an extra £5 to CamKids when you spend £10 or more - www.giveasyoulive.com/join/camkids

Who Will Children's Village

We thought that you might like to see some photos from the Who Will Children's Village, including their newly painted children's houses. Thank you to all of the volunteers who put in a great deal of hard work in the baking sun to chip away the old render and repaint the houses.

Progress on CCC school in Kampong Speu

Work has started in earnest at our new project in a remote part of Kampong Speu province. We are working with three village communities to build a school and medical facility.

The school will run kindergarten and grade one and two classes at which time the children are old enough to travel the distance to the nearest government school. Future plans will comprise of a range of community activities including running literacy classes for the adults in the villages.

As mentioned in our last newsletter this falls under the umbrella of our new MEND initiative (Medical, Education, Nutrition, Development). See our latest Newsletter for further details.