Sunrise Children's Village

(known as Sunrise One)

Complete rebuilding of current kitchen which will feed around 200 people three times a day. Frank Bochmann, the Australian Food and Beverage Manager of the Raffles Royal Hotel, is a mate who has taken it upon himself to design this for us and the tenders came in at US$100,000 and construction started in March 2008 with funding from generous donors. However, we still need funding for a hot water system, refrigeration and a cool room, hygienic waste disposal and preparation areas, kitchen utensils, glassware, crockery and cutlery which we hope will not cost more than US$80,000.

Extension of our current music and dance school. What we have now is far too small for our growing numbers and we want to be able to give performances on a proper stage with curtains, mirrors and a dressing room, to visiting busloads of tourists to raise funds, so we need to double the current size. This project came in at a price of US$88,000 and construction also started in March 2008, but funding for this still needs to be donated.

Office. There is a small cottage where Geraldine used to live for four years, which is now going to be our new office. It is in bad shape and we may have to knock it down and start again. To rebuild it to accommodate desk space for eight people I believe would cost around US$50,000.

Continuing on an annual basis for desktop computers for 50 students with 'the lot'. The children are doing Word, Excel, web design, Power Point, Access, AutoCAD, Photoshop and they need the same space and memory that we do. It would be wonderful to be able to upgrade these every year. When I beg, borrow or steal upgraded computers each year, we in turn, donate our old ones to poorer orphanages who can still make good use of them. In the past I have got computers from Chase Manhattan Bank, Cathay Pacific Airlines, a Hong Kong International School, ING Insurance in Hong Kong and Hewlett Packard in Singapore. Recently the boys of Prince Alfred College in Adelaide raised over $5,000 to buy our children new computers and Mitcham Girls High School in Adelaide another $900 for new computers. I have written several proposals to the Gates Foundation over the years, but not even a response. What we teach in our Computer and English classes has been able to produce 3 boys and 2 girls so far that are making us proud. One boy has started a law degree in Sydney University this year, and the others are studying at private colleges in South Australia. We are negotiating with other educational facilities for them to give scholarships to those Sunrise students who work hard and pass here with high grades. For the children to know that this is possible for them is so motivating. They have seen Sunrise Graduates fly out and they are working, the girls too, even harder. We teach them continually that we will give them a good education here or abroad, so that they can return and do something to make Cambodia a better place for them and their children. Some of the children have already told us they want to be human rights lawyers, teachers, doctors, judges, pilots, architects, engineers, journalists, businessmen and women. They have ambitions, like all children. The only way they can achieve their dreams is through education. We do not know the cost of this of this on an annual basis but are counting on generous corporations to continue donating computers to us as they have done so far in the past.

English Classes. We give the children English classes five nights a week at Sunrise One, but because of the distance from the city, we cannot get really well qualified teachers to come all this way at night. So the level they learn at is not that high. So we send our brightest ones to the Australian Centre for Education (ACE) in Phnom Penh 3 times a week and this is where we get results. Four terms a year with books and tapes costs around $600 for each child and we would be looking at 40 students each year attending. A cost of US$24,000. But the rewards for this amount cannot be measured in dollars!
Garage. We have 15, 25 and 45 seater vehicles that are used to get around 130 children to and from school and to other regular places of study and play. We also have a Nissan pickup truck, a 1993 Toyota 4WD, a 1993 Mitsubishi 4WD and about 3 other staff cars and a handful of motorbikes, all needing to be housed from the sun, which is not happening at the moment. A new garage for our vehicles would cost around US$50,000.

Irrigation System. A South Australian Riverland Rotary Club offered to supply the irrigation equipment required to water our lawns, gardens, crops, footy field, etc. and they were going to come up as Rotarians and install it all. It is mind-numbing watching our poor farmhands in the dry season, carry buckets of water on poles across their shoulders, and drag old hoses around pumping water from our ponds to try to keep our lawns, gardens and crops alive. If we had automatic irrigation this would free them up to do real farm work! However, when the new Rotary President came in, he did not like the plan and so it all fell through. The cost to do this on our 5 hectare property is around US$48,000. The local Australian plumbing company here knows how to work with Rainbird, but it would be wonderful if we could convince Rainbird to donate their equipment. We have already received around US$7000 worth of equipment for this project from (name to be supplied by Geraldine) in South Australia – a great start, thank you!

Beach Trip. At Sunrise One we try to take the children to the beach in Sihanoukville at least once a year and so far we have had a generous sponsor from the German Embassy who has done this for us annually, but she has now retired. For say around 160 people including children, staff and carers, to have one night in a guest house and two days on the beach, with cheap meals organized through local restaurants, and various other sundry expenses like hiring beach equipment for the children and so on, would cost between US$5–6,000, taking into account that we are accepting new children all the time.

Well, that’s about it for Sunrise One.