Day 1 - Sok Sabay & Little Sprouts

Early start for the 9 of us, catching our 6:40am plane to Phnom Penh with about 100kg of donated clothes, books and toys in our luggage. Luckily some of us travel light and Jetstar Asia was very understanding. Today was all about settling into our Hotel, taking in the sights and sounds of Phnom Penh, running errands for the housbuilding (including 63 liters of water) and we were amazed about the progress in the city since our last visit 3 years ago – new shops, more modern apartment buildings, more cars…and more traffic. Progress has come!

In the afternoon, after sorting through the 7 large bags of donations, we went to our first stop - Sok Sabay, the center for the protection of mistreated children. We had visited Sok Sabay the last time three years ago and are always amazed what Marie Camal manages to do with the limited funds available to her. The center is now temporary home to 64 kids, all being prepared for a bright future. Most of the kids were in school so we played with the smallest ones for a while before Marie, with her usual energy, dragged us off to show us Sok Sabay’s new home – a beautiful house with great grounds, in a better and safer location. Marie and her 64 “helping hands” will be moving next week and are very excited. Next, we went to visit Little Sprouts, a program established by Maryknoll. The little sprouts program was established to provide shelter for children who are either orphaned or displaced, with their parents often too sick to care for them. Close to all of the children are HIV positive and as the administrator later explained, thanks to new 4-times-a-day antiviral doses, the live expectancy of these children has dramatically improved in the last few months.

It was the first time for us to come to Little Sprouts which is located in the suburbs of Phnom Phen.

Even before we could get out of the van, we were surrounded by a mob of very, very excited children, who wanted nothing more than being taken in their arms and played with. All of us, including Chiara and Luca – our kids - took only a few minutes before being deep into ball games, tag and being dragged around the courtyard by the smiling and laughing children. Seeing 40+ energized children running around like mad all made us almost forget the difficult circumstances they are in.




















A tiring but rewarding first day, with many images which will remain in our minds for a long time