Never too young to volunteer!

Deborah was twelve when she first got involved with Cambodia…largely because of her mother. Her mother was involved with CTAP (Cambodia Tooth Angel Project) in 2008 (a not-for-profit organization that aims to deliver medical and dental care for the poor but especially for orphans, slum dwellers and the children in prison just because their mum or dad are in prison). Initially, Deborah’s involvement was limited to just helping out at home by cataloguing donated medicine. Soon however she found that she wanted to do more and told her mother. In response, her mother suggested that she and her two older sisters accompany her on her next trip with CTAP into the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

That was the first time Deborah had traveled into Cambodia. She had never been to a third world country before, so this trip of volunteering in Cambodia was full of great new experiences for her.

Even at the tender age of twelve then, she was given the opportunity to do a wide range of jobs with the team she came to Cambodia with: A doctor, a nurse, a medical assistant and three other volunteers. As part of the team, she would often go out to administer free health checks to orphanages, the slums and to rural communities. Health checks are necessary to identify and treat infections, scabies, lice and other illnesses as well as de-worming them. 

One of the main orphanages that the team visited was the Happy Tree Orphanage, home to approximately one hundred children between the ages of 6 months to 14 years.

They brought over a 100 teddy bears that someone in New Zealand had knitted and each of the children in the orphanage received their own teddy bear. It was amazing to see how much the gifts were appreciated by the children who were so taken with them that they wouldn’t put them down.

Deborah has since been back to Cambodia. The majority of her time on her second trip was working with an early childhood educator, Fiona, and her daughter, Allyse, along with two other volunteers from New Zealand. They brought learning resources and material (like counting bean bags and footballs) for the children and Allyse and Deborah would assist Fiona when she was teaching them, as well as playing games with them and reading to them. 

This experience has made Deborah realize what a privileged life she leads compared to some of the children she has seen. There are many children in orphanages all round Cambodia and often they are provided with very little.  They don’t have their own clothes, or toys or even pencils, so anything that they are given is really quite special to them.

CTAP (Cambodia Tooth Angel Project) has grown so much that they have now registered in Cambodia as One-2-One CAMBODIA. Not only are they involved in dental programs but also they have also expanded into providing medical support  and sponsorship to older orphans and children to further their studies with the end objective of helping them find a way of making a living.

On Deborah’s most recent trip to Cambodia a few weeks ago, One-2-One CAMBODIA took seventy orphans out to a restaurant for dinner. This was the very first time that they had ever been to a restaurant. They had never seen so much food in one go in their entire lives and it was amazing to see how much they ate and how much they enjoyed themselves.

Mobile Swift visit to Banteay Meanchey Community

From July 12^th to 16^th  2010, the Mobile Swift Team of One-2-One CAMBODIA in partnership with the Denmark Dental Health Without Borders, visited the Banteay Meanchey Province for providing dental and basic health care to the residents in the community.

This trip was made possible with the generous sponsorship of Camkids. It was a fantastic co-operative effort along with the help Dental Health without Borders, Dental Students from International University of Cambodia as well as dental students from Ireland and volunteers from England. A reflection of how global partnership within the community in Banteay Meanchay making a huge difference.

 

The place was very muddy. On the day that our team arrived it rained non stop. As a result, it was very difficult and we were faced with challenging working condition. The villagers however made us so welcome and worked very hard with us to set up. Our team gladly rolled up our sleeves and got working.

Dental work: In total the team treated 470 patients including 73 adults (female 49, Male 24). We also conducted routine checks on 84 children who ended up not requiring treatments and 313 children who did have treatments. We had 11 chairs. In total, we treated 231female, 189male. In the 4 days that we were there,  the team carried out 423 Extractions; 79Filling; 13Scaling; 04 fluorides and gave out 470 toothpaste and toothbrushes. After the treatment our team gave gifts like sticker, balloons, and color books were handed out to the children.

Medical work: De-worming 470patients, 55 nits and 30 nail clipping. The medical team was truly a partnership effort, led by One-2-One staff.  We involved the local women and spent time teaching them basic healthcare like  how to look after their children's hair, finger nails, deworming schedules etc . It was a relaxed but very fulfilling experience  - seeing the same mothers the next day and knowing how much they appreciated our support and understood the importance of being able to help/support their own families and friends through the basic skills they acquired made all our efforts worthwhile.

Sport/Game activities: Two English students (Sam and Dan) spent time with the local children playing soccer while they waited to see the dental team. They were also invited into the school, behind the community church, to teach the children English and also to play some fun games.

The week was focused on the needs of the local village and their people. We provided dental treatment dental education for all ages, basic health and hygiene education with hands-on experience of nail clipping, de-worming, nit treatment and hand washing. Being invited into the classrooms and playing and working with local children has given us opportunities to build relationships, trust and to reinforce the messages of hygiene and sport/exercise as being important to good health and prevention of illnesses.

Last day at work: At the end of the day our One-2-One staff organized a small party to thank the overseas team and Cambodian students for the hard work. We gave each of our visitors a certificate for their hard work with One-2-One. After the formalities were taken care of, the Cambodian students taught everyone some traditional Khmer dancing. It was a night of fun…a fitting conclusion to a successful mobile trip.

Mobile Prison visit to Banteay Meanchey Province

From July 5^th to  9^th  2010, the One-2-One CAMBODIA Team in partnership with Prison Fellowship of Cambodia and the Denmark Dental Health Without Borders, spent one week at the prison in Banteay Meanchey Province providing dental and basic health care to the prisoners and prison staff.

A tremendous effort was made by every member of the team to make the most of each day there, seizing this wonderful opportunity that had been given to them.

The One-2-One Team had 15 Khmer students. Seven dental chairs, two portable dental units and 6 lights were set up. Helena Duff represented our Medical Team.

Each work day started at 7.30am setting up equipment, materials and organising prisoners to be seen and treated.

The oral health status of the prisoners was very poor with many decayed teeth and very poor oral hygiene. Dr John Christensen performed a triage of the patients, to help prioritise urgent cases.

We strived to maintain a high standard of cross infection control. Oral hygiene instruction was given to the patients along with a new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, as a lot of the prisoners had not routinely performed tooth brushing and there was a high incidence of smoking, and some prisoners with HIV.

In total the dental team treated 280 patients. There were 255 male prisoners and 25 female prisoners who received treatment out of the entire prison population. We provided 292 extractions, 49 fillings, 25 scalings and 400 toothpaste and toothbrushes.

In total the medical team treated 810 patients over the 4 days. 750 were men and 60 women.  We also offered de-worming tablets to the entire prisoner population (which was far more than 810) and provided the tablets to each prisoner who wanted it.

We wish to thank Prison Fellowship Cambodia for their financial and logistic support, Denmark Dental Health without Borders as well as the English, Irish, New Zealand and Khmer volunteers who gave of their time so generously.

Medical team in actions

With huge help and funding for the medical team from the sponsors in Singapore, the One-2-One CAMBODIA is able to purchase the various medical equipments.

It is wonderful and most encouraging for the team.

As a result we have held training workshops to ensure that every one knows HOW to use and maintain the equipments correctly.

You can see Kosal and also Sreynin , Sophear and Hor in the volunteering work.

Thank you again Singapore team for making the medical clinic possible with your generous donation of the equipments.



Actions in SMILe Project

You can see the One-2-One team lead by Dr Callum explaining and discussing what we hope to do, listening to them to understand what their needs are and how we can best achieve the desired outcome.

Then we set out to have a look at what the dental situation is like and make some friends .... show the Mum's and the children that dentists can be friends as well...

For many foreigners who were present, this is a first so it was important for them to see the MOBILE chairs and what the examination and treatment activity would look like when we come back with a larger service delivery team. This created a real buzz in the community.

They are excited about the training and the integrated way that we plan to help them and work with them. Their faces beamed when we told them that we would run training courses on how to keep healthy. It was a very happy day for all concerned.

We will be back in October for a needs assessment trip and focus group interviews to better understand what the dental and medical needs are, what the pattern of feeding is for the preschoolers so that we can better educate the mothers and the health care volunteers.  This will be a week long visit. During this time our staff will live in the village and be part of the happenings.

In November then we will be back with training sessions and December our service team will commence work with the assistance of the village mum's, health care volunteers and community leaders we trained to work along side with us. So watch this space ...

Thank you for journeying with us. Together that which is impossible for each individually becomes possible. This is a reality that we all dreamt and hoped for. Partnership participation and protection for the sake of the children of Cambodia.

Introducing SMILe Project in Kampong Spue

Kampong Spue is the first community for the Cambodia Camkids SMILe project. We believe that this is a first for Cambodia. This is a collaboration between One-2-One CAMBODIA and Camkids.  Camkids and One-2-One make history together AGAIN !!!!

The area is about 1 1/2 hours from Phnom Penh and the drive there passes through beautiful scenery which belies the hardship of the people in this community.

The nearest Government health clinic is 25 KM away and with no public transport. The only  motor vehicle available belongs to the village chief. All the villagers we spoke to had never been out of their community. Phnom Penh is another world to them ...

KAD (Khmer association for development) has been working in this community, They brought the attention of the plight of the poor to our attention, (the lack of dental medical care, the geographical isolation). With funding from Camkids and One-2-One's manpower this project came into being.

3 prong approach - provision of desperately needed dental relief of pain with medical treatment and prevention measures as well as training of the village stakeholders so that they can better look after them selves.

This trip was to gauge community interest and to meet with the Cambodian stakeholders of this community i.e, the village chiefs and the local village health care volunteer as well as villagers. We explained to them what we plan to do and how we hope to involve them in the planning of service delivery.

Transporting teams in serving the communities

Taking children from orphanages to receive dental treatment and check up.

One-2-One van has been working over time transporting our team to prison, slums, orphanages . We are so grateful for it. Thanks to Dr Barry from Australia for his kind donation.

Here is Makara with our One-2-One Tuk Tuk which has been so generously donated by our Singapore donors. Th tuk tuk is worked  equally hard and used for smaller groups to maximize efficiency of our resources.

Welcoming Khairos Dad - John

We welcomed John (husband of Helena ) who will be Khairos Dad and One-2-One life skills coach.  

You can see him settling in really well with our lads.

Khairos Mum – Helena.

One-2-One CAMBODIA is now an official NGO in Cambodia

We have initiated application of registration of One-2-One CAMBODIA in Cambodia as an NGO ... thank you to Singapore's donors generous support - we are now a registered NGO in Cambodia as of the 13th Aug 2010.It has an official logo.

Tough Little Champion aerobic Gym club underway…

Getting Tough Little Champion aerobic Gym club underway on the 8/8/10 from the more talented orphans that we have been working with in the last 6 months. The photos on the left shows the General secretary of Gym federation with our Male and female Coach.

We had a great sports morning for Happy Tree, orphans which went really well. Thanks to Dan Bedi and Sam -volunteers from England.

Visits to orphanages by Taiwan medical & dental teams

The Taiwan Medical Dental team with half of our leadership team spent 5 days serving orphanages outside the Siem Reap area. This was an amazing time of service and fellowship.

The other half of our leadership team stayed behind in Phnom Penh assisting with the first 3 day Cambodia Paediatric Dentistry Conference.

We have also set up 2 Medical service to the most vulnerable and poor at Lake side slum community and also Aziza area in Phnom Penh ...

Our team did 2 MOBILE service to Bantey Manchey - one trip to provincial prison and one trip to the community  ... they are providing desperately needed dental service that these folks would not have had.

Phally (MOBILE Leader) birthday

We celebrated our dear Phally ‘s(MOBILE Leader) birthday in the month of July 2010.