In late 2017 a few members of our family donated a postie bike to ChildFund Australia to assist them with their work in Cambodia.
The classic postie bike, which we know so well in Australia for delivering our mail and parcels, enables ChildFund to deliver much needed supplies such as food, water and vaccinations to remote communities in Cambodia.
This year we travelled to Kratie Province, in northeast Cambodia, to deliver the bike. On that trip we visited some extremely poor and remote communities. They were some of the poorest communities in an already very poor country.
When we visited community mothers’ groups and primary schools we were stunned by the extent to which a lack of access to clean safe water impacted the lives of babies and children.
Cambodia has an extremely high level of child malnutrition and a lot of this can be attributed to not having access to clean water, which can result in extreme diarrhoea, dehydration, susceptibility to other related illnesses and, in many cases, death.
We returned from our trip, determined to help further. For a few thousand dollars we discovered we could build and install a working well that would save the lives of many children and families. It was crystal clear to Maureen, Melinda and me what we needed to do next, and so our Just Giving project was born.
Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and colleagues we exceeded our fundraising target for Just Giving and raised enough money to not only build a well for a remote community in Kratie Province, but also provide desperately needed supplies for the local medical centre. We are so excited that work on the well will commence very soon. ChildFund Australia and ChildFund Cambodia will oversee the project and have everything on the ground ready to go, now the funds have been raised.
For Maureen, Melinda and me it’s been a real eye opener, an education and also a real pleasure to spend time in Cambodia. Thank you to ChildFund Australia and to ChildFund Cambodia for your warm welcome and allowing us this extraordinary experience.
Arkoun.
This was my first trip to Timor-Leste and I didn’t know what to expect. Looking at the statistics during my desk review, basic healthcare is a massive challenge in this corner of the world.
This country has some of the highest rates of newborn deaths in Asia, and the remote villages like the ones I was about to visit in Liquicia where ChildFund Timor-Leste works, are among the most dangerous places for babies.
As we made our four-hour journey through the mountains, I reflected on the root of the problem. As with other countries where conflict and occupation has spanned entire generations, Timor-Leste was crippled by deliberate famine, population displacement, destruction of its infrastructure (estimated at 80 percent destroyed), and had its social structure upended by the loss of a third of the population.
The country has had to rebuild from scratch, and to its credit, things have been moving in the right direction, albeit with a long way to go.
The villages were not much more than a cluster of barebone houses lining a dirt road. I was happy to see electricity had made it to these hillsides, but it was very dry, and I’d been told by our team that several healthcare centres in our project areas still struggled with accessing water needed for basic services.
Healthcare centres are rare. Facilities were targeted during the war, and many of the country’s doctors and medical professionals were forced to flee. Women in remote villages often walk several hours in search of help for their sick children.
When I arrived at the community gathering, I was struck by how young the majority of people in Timor-Leste were. The country lost so many people during Indonesia’s occupation. More than 60 percent of Timor-Leste’s population is under the age of 25. In neighbouring Australia, where I live, it is less than half that.
The health repercussions of this are something I have to think about as ChildFund looks at future programming here – there is a new generation of young Timorese who need support as they start getting married and having children. Most have limited maternal, child or sexual reproductive health knowledge and services. How can we work together to turn that around?
The remote villages in Timor-Leste lack services and expertise, but the young people I met were eager to embrace anything that could help their communities prosper.
