CAMBODIAN ORPHANAGES

I was recently in Cambodia doing a documentary. We were a small, crazy crew of eight, filming a big, serious story. A fact-finding mission to uncover the neglected world of Khmer orphans and to record the devastation left behind by the powerful Khmer Rouge, the rebels that took over peaceful Cambodia in the '70's.

There's a lot you can do right from home to support the orphans left behind. Impoverished and abandoned, they have no-one to care about them. Today, I work with four different orphanages in which you can sponsor a child. For only $300.00 a year, you can pay for a child's food, clothing and education.

While some children already have sponsors, like my "daughters, " Khan and Thoeun, at Palm Tree, and my daughter Danni, at Future Light Orphanage -- most have no-one. These children need your help.

Here's a letter from two of my girls, Khan & Thoeun. Both are twelve years old, but look seven due to malnutrition. They arrived from the same village, a small mountain town far from their orphanage in Phnom Pehn. Their parents died of thyphoid and malaria. With no one to take them in, they were shipped to the Palm Tree Orphanage. Once there, the founder of the orphanage, Mr. Pole, struggled to feed and cloth them, along with sixty other orphans. Now that I sponsor them, he can worry about the new orphans sent to him from all over Cambodia.

Recently, I sent Khan and Thoeun a funny card with a 3-D cat on it. Here, Mr. Pole, a survivor of the deadly Khmer Rouge, does his best to translate:

Dear Mommy, How are you to day? We are fine. We recieved your
presents already. We love it. It is cat.
Thank you for sent me for your kindness and generosity.
We keep it forever. We look everyday before we go to school.
We went to pleasant site with all orphan yesterday. We ate foods and
visited the monkeys. They are lovely.
Please take care you health and good bussiness.
Love,
Khan, Thoeun

Even a simple card means so much to them. It means someone is there for them.

I will personally help you pick a child to sponsor. A boy, a girl, an infant, a ten year old. They're all there... all waiting. Contact me and I will work closely with the orphanage to find the best child for you.

You can communicate with your sponsored child, get to know your sponsored child. That's what they hope for the most. To know that someone is out there -- somewhere in the world -- who knows about them and cares about them.

If you cannot sponsor a child, perhaps you could write to one and send a birthday card, an occasional gift -- a note to remind them that they are not alone.

Contact me and I will help you find a child that really needs you. And please, for only $300.00 a year, consider sponsoring a child today.

Thank you.