Tuk Talk – Kenny comes to town (Issue 5)

PHOTO OF THE MONTH: Children are confused to see such a big stuffed animal who even moves!

Tuk Talk – Fifth Issue

February 2018

How are you all? It has been really cold (20℃) in Pursat and we cannot sleep without blankets! Also this season seems to be the time to prepare Cambodian special fermented food, Prohock, so if you cycle around the villages, you will see a lot of people catching fish. We were invited to help empty a pond and catch fish by a grandmother who is a part of the TT4C family. The day involved a lot of mud and a lot of fun! 

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 and once again, we appreciate & look forward to your future support.  

Introduction of our Partner NGO Vol.2

We would like to introduce you to our second partner NGO, DDSP (http://www.ddspcambodia.org/). DDSP or Disability Development Service Program are a local Cambodian NGO that support people with disabilities and the community that they live in. In Cambodia, there are not many services for people with disabilities so we are so proud to have such an organisation in Pursat. DDSP has 4 main projects, Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) Project, Paraplegic and quadriplegic rehabilitation (PQR) project, Mith Komar Pikar project (‘disabled children’s friend’) and Water and Sanitation Project. Today, we will introduce to the Mith Komar Pikar project (‘disabled children’s friend’) which TT4C supports with our mobile library project.
Mith Komar Pikar project (‘disabled children’s friend’ project)
DDSP supports both children with physical disabilities and with mental disabilities. For Children with physical disabilities (legs, arms, eyes, ears), they support the state school and train the teachers so they can study together and also support the school environment and learning materials for them to study.
For children with mental disability, they have 3 special classes in state schools; one in Pursat city and two in Bakan district, one of which is also a day care centre. This January, they opened a new training centre where they are teaching children with disabilities English and Computer studies. In the future they will include vocational training and homeskills for adults to allow people with disabilities to create their own income stream and as a social enterprise to help fund the charity.
TT4C visits with our mobile library to the special class in Pursat city to lend them books and teaching materials. We also participate in story telling, games and songs and introduce volunteers who help with the classes to support the teachers.
Once a year in November, DDSP hosts a charity race to help raise funds. It has 10km and 5km course as well as a special wheelchair course. Last year, one of the Japanese volunteers in Pursat came in 3rd for the 5km race! Why don’t you join Pursat Run and support DDSP?

Report for January

Tuk Tuk Theatre（TTT）

In January, we had Ema and Niamh as our old crew and also had many new volunteers and TT4C supports visits!

【Visits】
9 times, 306 children【Movie for the month】
Pocahontas (3nd part)
Enchanted (1st part)【Highlights】Children were really happy to see new faces! Taya introduced us to a new game “Stop & Go” and it was a hit! We used some new toys from Japan and also we took some donated ukuleles as well. Children were so excited about all the new things they are experiencing. 

Tuk Tuk Mobile Library（TTML）

We visited 6 kindergartens. This month, we read our own kamishibai story which is written by Mayu and illistrated by Kaho, former TT4C volunteer. This story is a counting story so we enjoyed counting all together. If you want to write stories about Cambodia or based in Cambodia, we are always welcome for new story ideas! Also Taya made finger puppets for this months song “Family Song” and it was a hit too!

Latest News①

TT4C has a new member! His name is Kenny the Koala. He used to work for Marcus but now he is a new volunteer for TT4C. We have many ideas what we can do with him so very excited. Thank you, Marcus!

Latest News②

We visited a Cambodian restaurant “Angkor Thom” in Tokyo in December to meet the owner, Ms. Setharin Penn who runs another mobile library NGO CAPSEA (https://www.facebook.com/capsea.cambodia/) for more than 20 years. Luckily she was there when we visited and even more lucky, she had a plan to come back to Cambodia in January so she came to visit us in Pursat with many books (already translated in Khmer!). We also went to see her NGO activity in Skun in Kompong Cham province and shared our songs. It was great for Dala and Sokha to get to know her as well. We are very excited about this new connection.

Latest News③ Rotary continue their support
A couple from the Rotary Club of Calgary Downtown, Canada who supports us with a grant for the Tuk Tuk Mobile Library project came to visit us to see how we are doing. Also they brought us great news which is… they are giving us another grant for the same project again for this year! Thank you very much , Rotary Club of Calgary Downtown for all of your support!

And…
We had a Day Trip for our staff and volunteers. We went to ride the famous bamboo train in Pursat. The real train was running up till early 1990s but after that it stopped so local people started to make a simple train to commute from village to village. Now they are making a new train track and soon Pursat will have a real train again, so we might not see the bamboo train in the near future…

Voluntukers in January

Taya

Adrian’s high school friend. She has been supporting us right from the beginning.  First time to visit Pursat. Only a short visit but she helped us making learning materials for kindergartens and introducing new games for TTT. And she promised to come back soon 🙂

Marcus

Adrian’s best friend from high school. TT4C long term supporter and second time in Pursat. His company “Bondi Ukuleles (https://bondiukuleles.com/)” donated 20 ukuleles and we will be  teaching kindergarten teachers ukulele in the near future. He collaborated with Dala and Sokha and recorded one of our songs for kindergartens. More to come!

Matthieu

From France – He came for 2 weeks and ended up staying for a month! He is an assistant English teacher in BBC in the mornings and helps TTT and translating our website into French in the afternoons. Also, as a qualified swimming instructor in France, he has been teaching BBC students how to swim at the local swimming pool. He loves nature and fishing so when he has time he is off hiking or fishing and discovering new places in Pursat!

Sean & Marie

A couple from Ireland. They stayed with us for 2 weeks from end of Jan. to early Feb. They supported DDSP’s training centre in the mornings as English and computer assistant teachers and in the afternoon, they helped BBC English classes and TTT. Sean put on the tool belt to build us a shelf for our teaching materials too! Also he is a dog trainer for our neighbours dog, Coca 🙂

Khmer for This Month

“mok” is “come”, “pi” is “from” and “na” is to make the sentence question. So as a sentence, it means “Where did you come from?” When you see a person you know on a street, you are asked this question very frequently. The answer can be anything! Convenient ones are “ptas＝house”, “psar＝market”, “offi＝”office” pronounced as “offi” in Cambodia”, or “sala＝school”.

Food for This Month
“Fried Banana (Chek  Chean)”

Fried bananas. There are slightly different in shape, how they are fried and the taste of the flour in each shop so it’s fun to try at different shops and find the one for your taste! 1 for 500 riel (12.5 cents). Some shops sell fried sweet potatoes as well!

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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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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