Siro~

So I posted in one of my previous blogs about my fiancé losing her best friend to cancer at the age of just 29 in August.

Well she was an amazingly generous person and was a founding member of a charity named BabyTree Projects, an organisation developed with her brother to provide schooling and education in rural Cambodia where her family had to endure torture camps while raising all of her siblings before being able to escape to Australia.


A brief history of the charity:

In the late 1970s an Australian charity helped the Saly family and their children to escape the desperate situation in Cambodia and to start a new life in Australia. The gravity of the situation was not lost on one of the youngest members, Koky Saly, who was inspired to help other in need, just as he and his family had been helped. In 2006, Koky, in participation with Orphfund, and with the assistance of many friends, family and associates raised money and a built a school in Sophy village. Sophy village is in Siem Reap province where 80 per cent of the children do not finish primary. The new school enabled many children to attend school as the overcrowded school was extended. Ongoing support for the school was provided including purchase of land for a school garden, a breakfast program and establishment of a library. In 2007 BTP was officially established as a charity with two branches one in Australia and one in Japan. The dedicated volunteers worked tirelessly to raise money to fund a new school in Peam village, also in Siem Reap province. BTP volunteers travelled to Cambodia in December 2007 and work on the project was completed in February 2008, with the schools officially opening in April 2008. This was a great achievement for BTP, with its first stand-alone project completed. BTP facilitates visits from English teachers to live in the village and teach at the school and is providing ongoing support for many of the schools activities. Since this time BTP has been working extensively with Anlong Kraing (Big Hole) village in Kampong Thom Province. BTP constructed a school building there in January 2009 and constructed a secondary school building 10km away in Sambour village in 2011. BTP is also exploring ways to improve the quality of education, including providing visiting teachers, English classes, scholarships, teacher training and much more. In each of these school building projects, volunteers traveled to Cambodia to live in the village, assist local builders in the construction of the school building and interact with children and other village members. The volunteers are encouraged to run classes for the school children, play games and attend village events. It is an amazing experiencewhere theylearn about Cambodian village life and culture and even pick up some Khmer along the way. Throughout each of these projects, in intervening trips to Cambodia and with our contacts on the ground, we scout for new villages that need and want assistance in establishing or extending a school. We consistently have several potential projects in our sights and visit our established projects regularly.

The charity have arranged a walkaton in her honor to help raise funds to build and maintain additional schools. My partner and I are obviously assisting and attending the day and although it is unlikely if anyone is willing to give even $10 it will have made this post worthwhile.



More can be read about the charity and her passing at their website http://babytreeprojects.org/.

Many Thanks LP'ers.

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Didn't get a chance to play at all the first week of the month and have to stop the month early to catch up on uni study/assignments. Played barely any 5/10+ this month and just did a big cashout to try and buy a house (offer pending atm) so I won't be playing 5/10+ anytime soon until I rebuild my BR.. Think I'll do a blog on house buying if we end up getting it+I want to blog about a charity event for a close friend who passed away .

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Been working on my game pretty hard the last few months and finally made myself play some higher stakes. It's nice to get some positive reinforcement for the hard work I've been putting in. Onwards and upwards!?

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