Tuk Talk – Introducing our Staff (Issue 2)

PHOTO OF THE MONTH:：　We danced hard with Japanese Dance “Uraja” ＠Tuk Tuk Theatre

Tuk Talk – Second Issue

November 2017

How is everyone? In Cambodia, the rainy season is coming to an end so during the day it can be still quite hot but the mornings and evenings are nice and cool.
November is the time for the “Water Festival” and a big boat race was held in Phnom Penh. The team from Pursat, our home town, is one of the winning teams every year. One of our Khmer staff members told us that she always watches the race on TV. For me, I have one good memory of the Water Festival from the first year I came to Cambodia… My friend in Siem Reap invited me to join the boat race there as a player and displaying no natural ability in a racing canoe, we sunk multiple times and couldn’t even make it to the finish line.. Good memories!

THANK YOU

Thanks to our supporters. We appreciate all your help including the monthly cash donations, books & toys, sharing our posts etc… Every action of yours allows us to continue our work. Thank you very much once again, we appreciate and look forward to your future support.  

Introducing our staff

This is our second issue so to let you know more about us we would like to introduce our Tuk Tuk for Children Family. Currently there are 6 of us, two directors in Cambodia (volunteers), two paid Khmer staff, and three volunteers, 1 director, 1 volunteer overseeing our accounting and our senior adviser in Australia.

from left, Dala, Sokha, Mayu and Adrian

【Adrian】

Executive Director of Tuk Tuk for Children. Australian. From 2014, he has been a volunteer in Pursat. At that time, his volunteer friends and he decided to buy a Tuk Tuk and started Tuk Tuk Theatre. He is 191cm tall so children who see him for the first time call him “ja! (means giant) and some start crying but because he is so tall, children love him as an human amusement park 😉 Only Barang (foreigner) Tuk Tuk driver in Pursat.

【Dala】

Khmer staff since January 2017. She is our translator, accountant, singer, TTT program coordinator ect… means that she is a super assistant for us. We love her smile and motivated attitude that often finds her more into the games than some of the kids. She is a very cheerful person and loves to talk sharing a lot of Cambodian Trivia.

【Mayu】

Director of Education for Tuk Tuk for Children. Japanese. Also Adrian’s wife. She came to Pursat as a JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) volunteer in 2014. Since the beginning, she has been the translation assistant and all round support. She talks to anyone and everyone making our trips into villages a social affair and keeping TT4C in good standing in the community.

【Sokha】

Finally we have our second staff member. Sokha started working with us in mid October, 2017. She is also a great assistant for Dala in all the activities. She too has a great smile and has a very calm personality so her and Dala make a great working team. She always brings us food so we would never go hungry with her working in our office!.

Staff in abroad
【Stu & Vanessa】

Director of Admin for TT4C. Australian. Stu is one of the 4 original volunteers who bought the tuk tuk and started this great adventure as well as Adrian’s old boss. He went back to Australia afterwards, but he is taking care of everything with the Australian side of our charity. His wife Vanessa is supervising our accounts. 
The Picture is from Tuk Tuk Christmas in 2015.

Report for August and September

Tuk Tuk Theatre（TTT）

In October, we visited 5 villages and  HOC (Hope of Children) orphanage in Battambong.
We haven’t been able to hire a Tuk Tuk Driver other than Adrian, so when he was away we had to pause TTT for a week.

【Visits】
11 times、332 children　　【Movie for the month】
Mulan（1st and 2nd parts）
【Highlights】
A JICA volunteer in Pursat came along with us to TTT and taught the children a Japanese dance called “Uraja”. The children love to sing and dance and they loved this one as well! Also our volunteer Rob brought many hand made toys from Australia so we took them out for the kids to play with them. They had never seen such toys and they were all so excited!
Also we made October as our oral health care month. Our dental nurse friend Emily, who is a previous volunteer in Pursat last year donated tooth brushes and tooth paste when she left. We gave a presentation about tooth health and introduced Emily’s Khmer tooth brushing song. This will be a six monthly project to try and reinforce the importance of oral care.

Tuk Tuk Mobile Library

It’s a school holiday in October so we prepared all the books and toys for the mobile library staying in November. We also made a lot of teaching materials so this month has been work, work work!

While ladies were preparing the library contents at the office, the men went out to kindergartens and prepared the cabinets for the books and toys to be distributed from November. The Kindergarten teachers were very happy to see the new shelves in the classrooms 😉

Voluntuckers in October

Rob

This was his 4th visit volunteering with TT4C. He was  Adrian’s primary school teacher many years ago. He comes to volunteer with us once or twice for a month or 2 each year. He is a retired teacher from Australia and was teaching for 38 years. He has experience as a school principal so  is helping us as our (very) senior educational adviser. Also, he is a very good handyman. He made a pizza oven at the Tukquaters on a previous visit and this time he made our rubbish bin and a musical instrument called the thong-a-phone or flip flop-a-phone for all you non Australians. After retiring he has worked in a Pizza restaurant so his homemade pizza is amazing! Not only the volunteers in Pursat, but the locals love his Pizza too! 

Khmer for this month

“Orkun” is “Thank you”, “Chrern” is “very much”.
You can just use “Orkun”.
Instead of using “Chrern”, You can use “Tom Tom”（which means “big big”）and this sounds cuter.

Food for this month
“Nom Bonhchok Khmer”

Cambodian typical breakfast or even a snack. This is their soul food. About 2000 riel (US 50 cents). Green one is called “Nom Bonhchok Khmer” but there is a red one called “Nom Bonhchok Kary”（Curry taste）and it cost around US$1.

Things we need

If you have some books or toys which are sleeping in your garage or if you know any schools or a child care centre which is renewing their toys please let us know! We are still looking for more books and toys to add to our mobile library. Please contact us for more information!
Example of the things we need (All for 3-5 years olds）
  • Picture books, Kamishibai, Big books
  • Durable Toys (blocks、wooden puzzles etc…)
  • Coloured pencils, crayons, paints etc…
We look forward to hearing from you!

【Contact】*English, Japanese and Khmer languages are available
  Email: [email protected]
Web: https://tuktuk4children.org/
(You can be a monthly donater from here!)

 

Adrian Paschkow

Adrian Paschkow

Love everything tuk tuk related and my life in Cambodia. Not an author but don't mind spinning a yarn for the benefit of this project.
Adrian Paschkow

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About the Author

Adrian Paschkow

Love everything tuk tuk related and my life in Cambodia. Not an author but don’t mind spinning a yarn for the benefit of this project.

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