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.