My name is Roeun and I am the new Community Service Manager! Every 6 months we rotate positions so we all have different experiences. I moved from the Volunteer Department to Community Service Department.
This month we built a house that is in Chrolong Village, it is around 15 km from Siem Reap.
Mrs. Vong is a widow who lives in a small cottage. She is 66 years old. Her husband died 10 years ago. She had three children, two daughters and a son but her son died. Her daughters do not live with her because they are married and live in another province. Mrs. Vong does not own land, and the land that she is living on his her younger sister's land. She earns only 5,000 riel per day ($1.20) through harvesting rice and growing vegetables, but her income does not support her. Sometime neighbours give her some rice, fish and other things to help her. She does not have anything else beside old clothes, pots, and dishes in her home.
60 people joined us in building a new house for Mrs. Vong - 48 from CRST, 8 from DH3 group, Mary and Tony from Australia, and 2 of Synat's friends.
We noticed at the last community service that some students were very tired and had no energy. So for the first time Mr. Doeb and Mr. Voan volunteered their time to make breakfast for everyone!! They got up around 4:00am to prepare in the front of our office. We left of the office at 6:30am and it took about 30 minutes to reach Mrs. Vong's house.
We divided into four groups which were Setting, Main Structure, Wall Frame, and Cooking. We could really tell the difference between everyone having no breakfast and having breakgast. We saw they worked hard, were full energy, and we worked until 12:00pm. We called them two times to have lunch, but they really did not want to stop unless they finished the part of the job they were working on.
We had lunch together - Tuk Tuk drivers, head of the village, DH3 teams, students and other volunteers. After we had lunch, we relaxed for around 30 minutes. And and 1:00pm we started again. We finished at 4:30pm and the DH3 team brought some food supplies for Ms. Vong.
