Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in riverkids' LiveJournal:

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Friday, November 24th, 2006
1:40 am	The Riverkids Shop! http://shop.riverkidsproject.org The Riverkids Shop is up! and completely ready! Comment here or email me with the URL where you guerilla market me and I will give you your very own Magilla Gorilla Discount Code! In other words, you will get a lovely 10% off as a big THANK YOU for telling more people about the shop. In other news, everything is really busy but good. I have the October spreadsheets and reports waiting to be posted now that the shop is up and running. The grant application ahs been finalized, we are a legal trust entity already (yay!) and have that application processing, and whew. In Cambodia - a ouple of things being planned, possibly renting another house to expand as there's a real need for teenagers and vocational training for the older kids, and also some hopeful moves from the trafficked girls. Jim went up last week and came back very enthusiastic and pleased with the steady progress. He did say it's really noisy when all fifty-plus kids are playing during lunch break! I'm going up it looks like briefly in December, then again in January. I'm going to try borrow a video camera and put together a short film. It's hard to explain - everything seems so intensely slow and frustrating, then suddenly things blossom and click into place. People have been fantastic help, and we've had several difficult family situations among the children, improve with parents really refocusing on their kids and making positive steps. Go shop! Tell all your friends and family and random acquaintences! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
2:10 am	Website updates and brief babble -- I totally forgot to update this LJ when I was doing the website. The July trip report went up a while back, and there's a bunch more things ready but not uploaded. We're in summer vacation from the school holidays, so the kids are being kept busy with workshops, field trips and lots of games, along with their regular after-school tuition. We're coming to a pretty painful point where we are almost completely full. We can't afford to take in more children without hiring more staff and switching to a second shift, but we do not have the funds to do that yet. (Anyone want to send me eighty grand to pay for a year with sixty more kids?) So we're going to have to start saying no to referrals. We can recommend a couple of other places, but they're either full-time shelters or the families don't trust them. So it's unlikely and really bloody depressing to say no and know that a child is probably going to be sold as a result. Oh! We were in a Singapore magazine as part of a family story on adoptions - kind of funny because the other two stories were fairly straightforward agency-happy-baby stories, and then there's us, *g*. I'm heading back to Cambodia in late September, end of school holidays. We're doing as much as we can with limited funds and staff, and most of the time - that's enough. Especially when I left on the last day and the kids were just leaving for school, waving and shouting in broken english at the top of their voices. Seeing one shy scared little boy turned into a playful affectionate brat who reminds me of my own two boys. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 15th, 2006
11:39 pm	Whoot! New stuff at the website The sixty good people webpage is up! I am a little embarassed how much time I spent tinkering with this, plus the donor database (ebase!) but I hope it works and is shiny and so forth. The donor database rocks especially. Anyway - also up is a spreadsheet of donations and a little site tweaking. I head up next week to sort out June's money - so tight, again - and to discuss staff issues. We have confirmed with three people to be directors - Jimmy Yap (my husband), Diana Saw (until recently sort of my boss. Now she's living in Cambodia. Very smart, hardworking and hands-on) and Lucy Edmonds (my older sister - she is far enough from the project to be objective and worked as a financial administrator before ditching that to become a maths teacher). I'm hurrying the trust formation as fast as I can, but it still looks like at least another two months. Guh. In not so great news, there was a burglary and laundry and two bikes were stolen. We're in a reasonably safe neighbourhood, but now that we have over a dozen children in weekly boarding, we need to hire a night watchman. We're also looking desperately for another social worker and an english/vietnamese teacher as two staff are leaving for scholarships (yay for them, though). Plus, we may need another house mother if there are more weekly boarders. The big shift around with the razing of the riverside slum has mostly settled, but midyear holidays are coming up and it looks like up to eight children may be pulled out of the project. The parents are mostly saying they will put the kids in a different school closer to home, but we're worried about a couple of them who are likely to be sold - older girls. So there's following up on that too. I have to appear in court for something related to the baby trafficking case, and that's all kinds of complicated, but I'll just have to wait and see how that works. But the good news still remains that we made it another month for food, school and hope. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 22nd, 2006
2:14 am	May trip report up! May 2006 trip report is finally up, with photographs of the new house. I also put up April's finances - they're unusually high because they include three months' rent deposit and two months' rent. Next up is the donor list and hopefully some news and fundraising reports. Sorry, just too tired to say anything else - the project is going smashingly well, and compiling all this reminds me how many people have been involved in so many ways and degrees. Thanks. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 4th, 2006
8:56 am	BBC coverage! Poor Cambodians face relocation - our community! Neat to see the BBC pick it up. I don't know if any of our families qualified for the relocation - you need to own the shack, and most of ours were renting theirs or on boats with sort of day shacks - lean-tos for sleeping in. (Comment on this)
1:26 am	Whoot! Okay, I just booked tickets (yay for promotional budget prices!) I leave this Friday with my eldest son until Tuesday, possibly through to Thursday. We'll be staying at the house - I just hope there's running water. No air-con, no TV, no mattresses, I can deal with as long as there's plumbing. Oh - I got photographs of the house and it looks just like the biggish houses I'd hoped for. There are kids climbing a tree in the front garden in one of the photographs. We also got a better deal than initially on rent, so that's good. And for everything else - I'm mostly caught up on emails and right now I just have to focus on getting funds and paperwork sorted out. Phew. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006
11:39 pm	April photographs Photographs from the April 1-5 trip! Please do pass around the photographs link, as [Bad username: ”viggorlijah”] is still offline (I am getting a horrendous amount of work done though) I really need someone with layout skillz to take my text and create a one-page flyer PDF that I can email or print. Please, please let me know if you can do this! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
10:07 am	Twit alert I have managed to delete the website by switching server stuff around - it's there, but not accessible. I was tyring to put up the April trip photographs. It should be fixed by this afternoon, but jut in case. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 22nd, 2006
2:50 am	Sneak peek! I changed hosts and have upgraded the website to WordPress. The domain hasn't switched over yet, but the new site is (mostly) up and running here: RiverKids. A very quick recap of my April trip is there, and if you poke around, most things should be organized and hopefully easier to find. The site needs more photographs, more individual and project stories, successful and not quite so, and the latest financial statements, so those are next. I'm also tweaking the donate bit - I set up a PayPal account just for RiverKids which is better, but I'm going to work out a snazzier sort of structure. And now, to collapse. Most boring work ever, but it's DONE. And future updates will be way easier. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 21st, 2006
5:13 pm	We have a house! Lyna just sms'd me. The house is pretty close to where we are now, if I'm reading the map correctly. It's $650/month for the first year, going to $600/month after that. Getting a decent contract will be important, not that it makes a lot of difference as there's very little property protection rights, but still! The others were more expensive or wouldn't rent for a kids' school. She says it's two stories, with three rooms upstairs and four downstairs, plus a garage. There's a big garden and a terrace with some fruit trees. Looks like we move there in June! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
11:20 am	Still here! The viggorlijah account is on hiatus - not an NSYNC hiatus, I promise! This is partly so I can concentrate on RiverKids along with a bunch of other projects, and doesn't affect this account in any way. Still contactable through this LJ or by email. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 31st, 2006
3:03 am	Give and Get emails sent out I just sent out 30 plus emails for the March Give and Get fundraising we held my last trip. We raised over US$1,000 after the gifts, and visionshadows raised US$788 in auctions- two so far! of bpal and lush, which was just lovely all round. I'm putting up a webpage for the Give and Get after I put up the March trip report - just in time for April! I leave this Saturday afternoon, the first of April, for four days in Phnom Penh, back on the 5th. I'm going with a friend, Diana, from Singapore who's thinking about moving to Cambodia and working with the project. We have been really really fortunate and have enough funds and fundraising for who we are now - what we do for 54 kids. But to do more is going to take an extra step, and I'm still not sure we can take it in terms of fundraising and people resources. One of the most important lessons I've learnt in my 20s? To say I can't do everything. And to know that with help from my friends, I can do a lot. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 4th, 2006
12:01 am	And finally - The January and February report is now online. Don't miss the photos of the New Year's Eve party either. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 3rd, 2006
4:44 pm	With impeccable timing - The Jan/Feb report is ready - I just need to tag and upload photographs and the htmlized spreadsheet to put it up. We're leaving for a week in Cambodia in less than twelve hours, so I'm a bit frantic. So. We registered in Singapore, two kids are missing (family stuff), one ran away and came back, most of thema re doing well, with some better than expected, two people locally have offered to volunteer, the accounts are sorted out, yay! to reveal that we haven't got enough money, but on the bright side, nothing has gone wrong. We're honest and broke. Still! What else quickly - the kids have all been to the hospital for a general check-up, no big surprises thankfully, and we have lucked into a cheap rental of our existing building which means we can take in a second group if we can get the funds and that we can hopefully set up a kitchen inside to hire some of the desperate families' mums to cook for all the kids something more nutritious than rice and half a fish. Vegetables! Yum. Okay. Links and the proper report coming up, this is in case I don't get it done before the plane leaves! Expect this account to be a bit more active this week as I'll post updates here. and pictures! My camera's been fixed, yay. Please PLEASE pass this LJ url around, encourage people to read about us. Thank you! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
11:53 pm	Belatedly I am running a couple of days behind schedule on everything, including River Kids. This is due to flu blah blah, but anyway! Some quick notes ahead of the proper January report which should be up this weekend. 1. We are going to formally register, most likely in Cambodia. I've got the ball rolling looking into that. They tightened up regulations in Singapore, after a scandal involving a big charity here and gold-plated taps, etc., which is great in general, but means that in order to register, I need to be significantly larger than I already am, and that's somehow managing around the 80% fundraising for Singapore-based work rule. If I can't register in Cambodia properly as an NGO, then I will probably register as a business and just be a completely non-profit business with open books. 2. Why are we registering? Money. To apply for grants, to ask people who don't know me that well for funds - a formal registration makes it clear that we are on the up-and-up on paper. It means more paperwork and hassle, but I think as we grow - and I am really hopeful for the second group in June, which would bring us to 80 or so kids, plus several full-time staff, we need it. 3. Depending on her workload and other committments, it looks like Lyna will be working for River Kids fulltime from March. We have to work out salaries, time and stuff, but this is both daunting - she's doing a lot in just a couple of days a month, and really really good. 4. I got some of the translated reports, and I will post with the Jan report a couple of anonymized stories and some general data of the kids. It is heartbreaking especially reading about children the same age as mine - their playmates as kids - and worrying about them in hard, hard situations, then seeing my little monsters running around healthy and safe. But it makes me more determined. 5. My sister who is a trained accountant thingy is doing the River Kids books now. This is a huge relief to me as I cannot handle reconciling bank statements. Everything looks fine, but I need to dig up some older bank records for her to finish it. As soon as she sends the cashflow (as opposed to the separate donors and costs lists - it's all in one place now), I'll put it up on the website. 6. We do need money. If you'd like to donate, River Kids has a Paypal button thingy. We're really tight for February, because January was quiet. 7. There was something else, but my brain has shut down. Hm. I'm still working through the December to-do list, and I hope to have some good news on several small projects soon. I'm finishing up a big work project this week, so both Lyna and I should have some serious work time in February, yay. 8. Happy Tet and Chinese New Year! (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
6:56 pm	Brief update Before I forget - We had a runaway, with suicidal threats. I need to followup on this, although for now it's resolved with the child back and relatively safe. Miserable with a difficult family situation, but not physical abuse, so it's a tricky thing to deal with. New social worker aide, getting the background data put up ASAP. Fishing season is here, and almost half the kids ditched school to help out with the family work. The school said they would have to remove the kids from class if they skipped too many days, so the social worker ahs been chasing kids and persuading parents. So far, no expulsions. We had a tet party! Photos to go up soon. Tet is the Vietnamese version of Chinese New Year, and it's also a sort of (CNY not Tet) holiday in Cambodia. Photos to come. A Vietnamese doctor has offered to do free medical check-ups on all the kids - I'm going to check out qualifications etc. first before accepting this very generous offer. Okay, proper report end of January, lots of other stuff and it looks like we will have to formally register in Cambodia, but I'll do that in March when we visit. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
8:30 pm	Eyes Yay! I got an email from an NGO, IRIS, regarding one of the kids in the project who has cross-eyes. I need to email Lyna to set up appointments with an opthamologist they've recommended, and IRIS says they can probably help with the treatment costs too. I'm hoping an adult woman from the community who we know pretty well and has the same problem, can also go for treatment - that would be borne entirely by my family personally, not RK. But man, it'd be so excellent to get them treatment - they're sort of resigned to having this problem, and IRIS seems like an ace organisation. In other news, I got a bunch of books from the library on fundraising and NGOs which make me feel alternately elated and depressed. I mean wow. The scale and the strategies and just - we're so little right now, and I want to stay little. Lean and mean and local. Well, not so much mean as nice, but that doesn't rhyme or alliterate well. We're currently arguing/debating over a fundraiser. Looking at cashflow, we need to raise about S$3,000/US$1800 by March and I *really* would like to have a three-month buffer. We had a problem this month because of money I was expecting hadn't arrived (totally me - I should've reminded people and followed up better). We covered it personally, and in a week, it should all be back to okay, but it meant a day of panic and some re-arrangements. I drew up the priority list for January, and I'll post it sometime this week. I've started contacting people and I expect to have some new arrangements, hopefully more good news soon. Plus! If you donated and for some reason haven't gotten an email from me, please do email me at dale@oggham.com with your postal address. We have (non-RK, our own money) thank yous for you guys who've made a very tiny little project become a little bigger and a lot more effective. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 28th, 2005
6:34 pm	Updated! The December report is up, and so is my terribly exciting trip report. The report has some photographs, but properly captioned ones are here. The trip report is a slimmed down version of my trip notes. I've got to send money over tomorrow for December expenses, and start going through the January tasks: English tuition arrangements for the two brightest casual fostering for two kids Teacher aide positions Adjusting salary and responsibilities Drawing up code of contact and contracts Three kids for medical treatment Following up on contacts and emails from December Catering breakfast for kids Those are the main ones, and I'll report on them as I make progress in January. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 22nd, 2005
3:53 pm	Back from the Bodge! Long, long trip report coming soon with photos. So much to think about, do and discuss! Short version first from my three full days there: 1. I am as completely confident as possible without having been involved prior to Octoberish this year, that there was no theft or fraud with Janelle Boulter and Sok Lyna. Serious miscommunications, but it's been resolved to my satisfaction and has nothing to do with River Kids. Lyna is not paid for her work for River Kids and her work is voluntary. She is paid by us, the Edmonds-Yap family, for work regarding our kids' birthfamily, but not RK work. 2. Oh my god, the kids! They were so amazing. We've got things to be arranged - a possible scholarship situation, extra tuition here and there, medical help for some, connections to other NGOs for family problems - but the kids were fantastic. Very very noisy - at one point, I was in the truck that takes them from their community to the tuition centre and they were singing off-key but with great enthusiasm! Mostly doing well at school. 3. We ended up not doing the christmas presents for the RK kids, because we visited the state school they attend, which is in a poor neighbourhood, and decided instead to do something smaller but for more children. We got some basic toys for the tuition centre instead, and distributed stationary sets to all of grade one at the school - 828 kids! We have 43 there, about 34 of them in grade one. Comparatively, the RK kids were better equipped and it helped with school relations and was just pretty great fun. 4. I have receipts and invoices, and I was able to meet and talk with the staff - two teachers, social worker and the driver - and to spend time with the kids as well, and to see what the RK money has bought. I didn't see anything at all that was out of place. We are probably going to adjust job resposibilities and formalize things more, but financially, aside from bank fees, all of the donations have gone directly into the project. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
5:13 pm	November report online The November report is up - no real bad news, a couple of good things and some things going slower. But overall, a steady month. And in a bit over a week, I'll be there for real details! (Comment on this)