Exciting times for the 2018 Trip

Time for blogging did not come easily this year, so here’s a summary of the work and a few entertaining highlights.

I arrived the morning of July 17 Cambodia time and did my best to stay awake for most of the day. It’s best to not plan on much when you first arrive as the travel is a real smack to the face. Deanna and I coordinated on what we needed to accomplish and came up with the following:

• Administrative tasks like reviewing the job description for a new treasurer volunteer

• Solar panel installations – targeted 8 setups to cover about 6 locations. Two of them are clusters of families.

• Review and inspect Wells and Toilets projects complete for 2018 in Reul village

• Build a new website

• Visit with two scholarship recipients to continue funding and check on their status

• Work with University of Southeast Asia to pilot a program to do scholarships for students who were not able to finish due to financial distress. Includes building a comprehensive selection model with multiple criteria for a well governed process.

• Distribution of first aid supplies brought from the US

• Discussions with the people at Khnar Tmei to continue our lasting relationships there as our first well location and see how we can help them be successful in the future

My focus was on the Solar work which turned out to be somewhat involved. I’m trying to transition this into a repeatable program. That meant establishing local contacts with both the tools and training they need to be successful if funded from afar. I also spent a fair amount of time on this new website. As crazy as it might sound, doing this from Cambodia was a lot easier than in the US.

In the middle of all this excitement I got an upper respiratory infection. It was bad enough to land me in the Royal Angkor International Hospital for a day. That’s the premier location geared mostly toward tourists (translation: people with insurance). I’m thrilled to say that after an overnight in their very nice facility I’m doing just fine.

I have only a few more days left to do some last Solar tasks like printing out the instruction PDF, getting a few last supplies, and handing off materials.

I’ll try to blog more now that we have a whole section for it!

Basket full of Solar Panel Supplies and Tools