This family is located in Prasat Village, Somroueng Commune, Puk District, Siem Reap Town which is about 17 Kilometers from Siem Reap. Pech and I went to visit this family - the mother’s name is Krey Saro and she is 45 years old, and husband’s name is San Chhun, 36 years old. Unfortunately, about 3 months ago Mr. Chhun got drunk and was violent against his family, especially his wife. This isn't the first time he lost control because of alcohol but Ms Saro did not file a complaint or put him in jail because she does not want to make something that connects to the court and waste the family money.
Ms Saro is also 8 months pregnant so it is fortunate that the baby was not hurt in this violence. Now they both divorce and her husband went back to his hometown in Poset Province and left 1 daughter and 4 sons. The first daughter is 12 years old, second son is 8 years old learning in grade 2, the third is 6 years old learning in grade 1, fourth is 4 years old, and the fifth is 2 years old. The second and fifth sons got TB, but now they both get better because they took TB medicines. Because the family condition is very poor and the mother is pregnant, the oldest child had to give up school and stay home to look after her 4 brothers with Ms Saro. Also, their family has not even had rice to eat every day, and they live like from hand to mouth. However, her relative who lives very close to each other gives her some food for her children for almost every day.
Ms. Saro used to sell flowers at Puk Market, but right now she cannot do that of her pregnancy. When Pech and I listened to her family background, it seemed like this family made us wanted to cry and we were so sad to hear that they have a lot of members living in a very small house, and their father left them which is very bad example for every man in Cambodia. Personally, I really want to help this family and want all of her children go to school and have education because that is a high priority.
UPDATE
We built Ms Saro and her family a new house on Sunday the 24th of January. Just a few days before we went to build the house Ms Saro gave birth to a baby daughter. They are both doing very well and the baby looks healthy and beautiful.
We started building the house at 7:30am - we separated our students into different groups so build the walls, the structure of the house and later on when the house was standing stands, we also had groups to make the roof, floors, and more walls.
We had lunch at about 11:50am, and we had two kind of food made by Doeb, Samach,Sompeas and some other students. Thank you for them as well for making great lunch for our students and our Australian volunteers, Zara and Holly!
We started to build again at about 1:30pm, and the house completely finished at 4:55pm then we took photos together. I did the short speech with a lot of thank you to Zara and Holly, villagers, house owners, and especially our students - they worked very well all together!!
HOW WE ARE HELPING LONGTERM
CRST is now sponsoring this family with:
Monthly food supplies totalling $70 - this includes rice, fresh food, dried food, hygiene supplies, cooking materials and other things they need
We bought a bicycle so the children can go to school more easily. They had 1 bike, but it was very old and they could not share it all the time
We met with the director of the local school and re-enrolled the oldest daughter to study in Grade 4 so that she can continue her education. We will follow up with the famiy every month and also with the school director
BEFORE
AFTER