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SUNRISE CHILDREN’S VILLAGES WISH LIST The prices I give are very much ballpark estimates, but at least you and your contacts can see the types of things we are seeking funding for, and then if and when interest is shown on a specific request, we can work on more precise quotes. All prices are in US Dollars.
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 he should have detailed plans and an estimate by the end of next week. I am expecting it to be around $80,000. It will include a hot water system, refrigeration and a cool room, hygienic waste disposal and preparation areas. We already have the funds to structurally extend the current dining room and provide sleeping quarters for 4 live-in cooks. 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. SMEC will give us an estimate by the end of next week. My guesstimate is $25,000. Office. There is a small cottage behind where I used to live that is now going to be our new office. I lived there for 4 years. It is in bad shape and we may have to knock it down and start again. To rebuild it to accommodate desk space for 8 people I believe would cost around $20,000 tops. A second playground. These are none available at all locally and the one we have is from the Clare Rotary Club in South Australia and is no longer adequate for 140 children. As a guide, three years ago it cost $12,000 plus freight. We have to pay around $600 “tea money” to clear just about anything, even though we are exempt from Customs being an NGO. Ergonomic computer chairs for 25 students. We got the first lot in 1999 and I am surprised that we still have wheels on some of them! All the backs were broken years ago, but we manage with what we have at the moment. We should be able to get 25 good, safe ones for around $80 = $2000. 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 or so. 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 and ING Insurance in Hong Kong. I believe a new Microsoft system is coming out with a built in Net Nanny to prevent access to unsuitable sites. To get our hands on this would be wonderful. 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 2 boys so far that are making us proud. One is starting a law degree in Sydney University this year, after he finishes his Taylors College Foundation Course, and the other one is doing Advanced English at TAFE in Adelaide. 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 two boys 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 me 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. I do not know the cost of this, but I am sure through IBM in Australia I could get an estimate of what this would cost. English Classes. We give the children English classes 5 nights a week at Sunrise, 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 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 and we would be looking at 40 students each year attending. A cost of $24,000. But the rewards for this amount cannot be measured in dollars! School Bus and Garage. Our car pool is a joke. We have a 15-seater van and a larger 25-seater bus, which has to make several trips to get all the children to and from school. This is quite a security risk as we have to ask children to stand outside the school to wait for their pickup and only last year one of our older boys was attacked by drug pushers with a sabre and he was badly gashed on the leg and arm and had to spend several weeks in hospital. In a country like Cambodia, you simply cannot have children hanging around outside schools where the drug pushers and other undesirables seek the vulnerable. A larger newer bus would cost around $30,000 and could take most of the children to school, leaving the other 2 vehicles to transport the kindergarten students. We currently have the old bus, minivan, Nissan pickup truck, a 14 year old Toyota 4WD, my 1993 Mitsubishi 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 $10,000. Farm Extension. Now this is really exciting. After the FAG (Farm Advisory Group!) Meeting the boys went away scratching their heads and have come back with a plan for $120,000 capital investment to establish the farm program and annual service costs of $25,000 (fuel, labour and consumables). See attached proposal. 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 attached quotation to do this is $47,981. 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. 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 left Cambodia. For say 140 children, 20 staff and supervisors,
around (160 total) to have one night in a guest house and 2 days on the
beach, with cheap meals organized through local restaurants, the hiring
of two buses and taking some of our own vehicles and various other sundry
expenses like hiring beach equipment for the children and so on, would
cost between $4-5000, taking into account that we are accepting
new children all the time. Sunrise Angkor are having a beach trip paid
for by a sponsor this month and my kids here are giving me a hard time
asking when I am taking them again…
Sunrise Angkor Playground, similar to what I have written above. New Kitchen, similar to the one we want in Sunrise One, but smaller as we can only accommodate around 80 children in Siem Reap. Say, around $50,000. Computers, again for 25 students, the same as above. We already have the computer chairs there. English lessons annually similar to above but for around 25 children - $15,000 Pickup Truck. The primary school is right next door to Sunrise in Siem Reap and the children walk there and the older ones ride their bikes to the high schools. But we do need a reliable pickup truck to take delivery of supplies of rice and to be used as a general office run-around car. We could get one locally in good condition for around $16,000. We have funding to do extensive renovations in this centre where we have
a 20-year free lease from the government to operate it. We expect to start
these renovations in a couple of months. We have an application in with
the government to extend this free lease to 50 years and I meet with Prime
Minister Hun Sen in May when I return from Australia to discuss this and
other matters. In Siem Reap, because of the location right in the city,
we cannot expand or take too many more children.
Airline Mileage. This is a more personal request for myself. Friends in the travel industry tell me that there are many large corporations who lose thousands of mileage entitlements because they are just too busy to use them before the expiry date. Is there a sympathetic company, who could possibly donate mileage to cover 2 economy return airfares on any airline from Phnom Penh to Sydney annually, to make my life easier? The main carriers who fly out of Phnom Penh are Singapore Air, Thai Airways, Air Vietnam and Malaysian Air. I need to come to Australia twice a year for a total of around 5 months, to speak at various fundraising events and I do not use Sunrise money to cover any of my travel costs. I can not claim these expenses because I do not pay Australian taxes. I am paid in Cambodia and pay tax here. Here you cannot claim these types of expenses. Airfares can cost $2000 with taxes, forced stopovers and airport tax. Once in Australia I try to stay with friends where I can, but there are the inevitable taxis, hotels, laundry and general living costs when one is not in one’s own home. Once in Sydney I pay all my domestic airfares and for instance this year I will be flying to speak at events in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart, Perth and around 6 country areas. One large factor in keeping our admin expenses as low as 9% is because I bear all travel and fundraising costs. On my salary of $30,000 this leaves me with very little left over to swing from chandeliers! For the months I am at Sunrise life is certainly cheap, but being “on the road” in Australia for 5 months eats up a substantial amount of my salary. Maybe there is a corporation that would not miss this amount of mileage from their programs and would look on this request kindly. Over to you… I do hope that there is a project in the above that appeals to your organisation and that I might hear from you soon about how to move ahead. I am very appreciative of the time you took to read this application. Geraldine Cox, AM
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