Chak Chap School, Ratanakiri, Cambodia
In early February Dr Nick and Claudine made the long journey to Chak Chap village in remote NE Cambodia to visit the brand new primary school built last year by Guernsey Aid in conjunction with United World Schools. It is already serving 100 ethnic minority Tampuan children who previously had no access to formal education at all. As well as the classroom block, our grant funded a solar powered well, gender specific latrines, teacher accommodation and a library. The government has agreed to take over future staffing and running costs but the demand is such that an additional classroom will probably be needed by the autumn.
In Nick and Claudine’s own words;
“The entire village turned out to welcome us and we were extremely impressed with the facilities that the grant had provided. Most touching of all was the fact that the children’s parents, who had never had the opportunity to go to school themselves, had organised their own adult literacy classes with the teacher. These have to take place after dark when work has finished in the fields so we have promised to fund another solar panel. As far as the children are concerned, the new school offers them nothing less than a route out of poverty and a much better chance in life”
The Lake Clinic, Tonle Sap, Cambodia
After visiting Chak Chap school, Dr Nick and Claudine did some voluntary work out on the Tonle Sap Lake with our long term partners at The Lake Clinic. The clinic provides a vital primary healthcare service to the neglected and impoverished communities living in the isolated floating villages around the lake. It was great to catch up with them again and the Committee has subsequently agreed a £3,000 grant to help their community outreach programme which provides villagers with bio-sand water filters and floating vegetable gardens to improve their health.
Community latrines in Chembe village, Malawi
In March one of our committee members, Cherry, organized a very successful quiz night and we met shortly afterwards to allocate our accumulated funds. As well as the projects above, we agreed to help our medical colleagues at Billy’s Clinic in Chembe, Malawi, who are fighting an outbreak of cholera, by funding a new community latrine block. We have also sent a donation to another of our partners in Malawi, the Roundtable, in support of their Cyclone Freddy Flood Appeal which is helping whole villages devastated by the floods in and around Blantyre in the south of the country.
Women’s development tailoring project, Maraland
Since the military coup in Myanmar on February 1st 2021 it has not been possible to assist in-country but we have still been able to help the wider Mara community which extends into NE India and now includes a significant number of refugees. In conjunction with the Waymaker Trust the opportunity has arisen for us to support a vocational training project for disadvantaged Mara women and the Committee has agreed to fund a grant that will provide sewing machines and other start up equipment for the group. Poverty levels have always been high in this part of the world but they are currently higher than ever.
Guernsey Aid 