We had been in Cambodia for over a week cycling around the Angkor temples, hiking through Cambodia’s countryside and taking in the Mekong by sunset, but it was this day that everyone was most looking forward to. Today was the day we were to visit three schools and meet some of the children who now have access to clean water and proper sanitation facilities because of our support.
Our destination, Damrei Phong commune was just 32km from where we were staying in Kratie Town. Yet the mountainous topography of the area, the poor road conditions and getting bogged meant it took us almost two hours to reach the community.
When we finally arrived at the first school in Damrei Phong we were welcomed by the school committee, teachers and the school principal. After a brief introduction we went to the school library which was built with ChildFund’s support and filled with books for the students to read and study. This is where we got to meet some of the students and joined in their craft activities. They helped us make beautiful origami and we helped them make some very basic paper planes!
We also played a couple of Cambodian games – the slide game and the do-the-opposite game. The children made up the rule that if you lost you had to sing and dance in front of everyone. So, as you can imagine without understanding all of the rules, our team spent a lot of time singing and dancing to the utter enjoyment of all the kids.
The children at this school were quite shy at first but it wasn’t long before they warmed up to this silly group of Aussies! The students also showed us how to wash our hands. They did a great job, making sure to wash between their fingers and under their fingernails. It was great to see the hand-washing facility that we had funded was being used so well.
Peter and Trish Fehon (pictured above) consider themselves “your average Australian couple”. They have been married for 35 years and have four children, plus a couple of grandchildren. They’ve also been sponsoring children through ChildFund Australia for the past 23 years.
“When we started sponsoring we had four kids who were very little. We could see the benefit in nurturing them and giving them a good start so we wanted to be able to give that opportunity to someone else too without it costing us a fortune,” Peter says.
And made a difference they have. In the time their four children have grown and had their own children, Peter and Trish have sponsored 10 children through ChildFund from Brazil and India to the Philippines and Cambodia.
This year, they decided to take their support one step further. These keen travellers have combined their passion of experiencing new things with helping children in need by signing up for our Cambodia Water Challenge.
On 29 October, the pair will join seven other Aussies on a 12-day adventure where they will challenge themselves to cycle and trek Cambodia’s vast countryside all to raise funds to help almost 1,000 young children from rural Cambodia access clean water and toilets at school.
Of the trip, Peter says he is most excited about getting off the tourist trail: “Visiting the communities and seeing the real part of the country will be great.” Not only will Peter and Trish visit some of the schoolchildren they are helping through their fundraising, they will also meet their nine-year-old sponsored child, Khol, for the first time.
The couple`s fundraising target was $7,000, which they more than doubled, raising a total of $14,250! All thanks to one fun long weekend with friends and family.
Peter, a car enthusiast, decided to host a three-day Dirt Driving Trek which gave participants the chance to explore 1,300 kilometres of NSW`s hinterland.
“It was a load of fun! We had 32 people come along. Probably 20 of those were people who had done this kind of thing with me before and the rest had always wanted to give it a go. So the group was a great mix of people,” says Peter.
From Mittagong through pine forests and picturesque grazing regions to historic Hill End and Bathurst to quaint towns and navigating the infamous Swallow Tail Pass, there was just one constant on the trip: dirt roads for everyone to enjoy.
Peter has lots of great memories from the trek but he says the highlight was “definitely watching a guy drive a 40-year-old Ford Falcon into the Macquarie River (for a river crossing) but getting stuck right in the middle!”
We are not sure if Peter and Trish are your average Aussie couple but we know one thing for sure: we can’t wait to hear all about their once-in-a-lifetime trip to Cambodia!
ChildFund Australia would like to say a big thank you to Peter and Trish, and all of our other Cambodia Water Challenge participants, who have put in such an incredible fundraising effort to make a life-changing difference for childr
