Dear friends and partners,

I would like to share a few more highlights of our work this past year. This one is about house building. People always ask why do you do house building. Well, there are many reasons. One of the main reasons is that house building is a great leveler. Our poorest families have a very low self esteem. They believe they are bad, they believe that they are not very smart. They believe that foreigners have all the answers. House building changes that illusion.

Through house building, Cambodians need to share their expertise with the volunteers that come. They teach foreigners how to hammer and saw, they teach foreigners Cambodian ways, they teach volunteers about their culture.

Foreigners like to have a meaningful volunteer experience. They would like to feel like they have left something behind. They would like to feel as if they have interacted with the people of Cambodia. House building fills that need.

Through house building, volunteers are dependent on the Cambodians for instructions on how a house is finished, volunteers play with the children and learn some Cambodian words, volunteers leave with a deeper appreciation of the strength of the human spirit under harsh living conditions.

This past year we had 75 teams come from all over the world, 2,273 volunteers came and built 1,131 houses. How good is that! Our youngest builder was 5 years of age – our oldest builder 76 years of age. That too is wonderful.

This past year we had plans to build 14 schools in our communities that have no schools or the schools are not so good. The request for schools comes after our families have met their basic needs of daily food, clothing, bedding etc. When the daily struggle just to eat a meal a day is past, the parents begin to focus on other needs. Schooling for their children becomes a priority. It is at this stage of their journey that they contact us to see if we can build a school. The school is a community project, chiefs, villagers and Tabitha staff work hard to make it happen. This past year we were able to complete 12 schools, impacting 5,870 children.

We were able to help an additional 182,528 children to go to school this past year. How good is that!

This year 2,900 families graduated from our programs. Graduations are difficult as families don’t like to leave our programs. It takes an average of 5 years for families to move from absolute poverty to middle class rural Cambodian families. At the end of our relationships, families have attained their basic needs, they have 4-6 sources of income, they have access to water, electricity of some form, transportation and 4 out of their 5 school aged children in school. The families have traveled a hard road. Their determination, their change in how they see themselves, their pride in what they have achieved – there are no words to explain that – perhaps a few  pictures of where they were to where they are now will help.

It has been a remarkable year – a year of journeys in life for so very many. I am so humbled to be a part of all of this. I thank my God for that privilege – I thank each of you for standing with us.

Janne