Information for Adoptive Parents
The Sharing
Foundation is a non profit charitable organization founded in May 1998
for the sole purpose of helping to care for some of Cambodia’s children.
Working in-country independently and with several orphanages, and NGOs
, TSF has funded projects which address a wide range of children’s
needs, including facilities in Roteang, Kampong Speu, Kampong Cham, and
Cham Chao, direct medical care, staffing, food and nutrition, sanitation
and education.
TSF
has provided over $10, 000 support to the Tabitha women’s cottage
industry group, as well as ongoing donations to The Nutrition Center.
It has sponsored a seriously handicapped child to come to the USA for
multiple surgeries and ultimate adoption, children needing medical care
in Bangkok, and an orphan now going to English and computer school in
Phnom Penh TSF is led by a small Board and a Parent Advisory Council,
all of whose sixteen plus members are parents of adopted Cambodian children,
which meets in Portsmouth, N.H. every 6 -8 weeks to assist with ideas
for fund raising, publicity, new projects, and project selection and planning.
The PAC and Board share a deep concern for the large numbers of children
in Cambodia who,
because of poverty, lack the bare necessities of life such as potable
water and adequate food, not to mention any education or medical care.
Anyone is free to join this group.
TSF is an all-volunteer organization; there are no paid employees, and no rented office space. Last year overhead was less than 4% of donations, most spent on printing and mailing a newsletter four times a year, accounting expenses, and minor legal fees. Every 6 months a Board or PAC member [not NWH] has a paid airplane ticket so that someone other than Dr Hendrie gets a perspective on all the projects. Nancy Hendrie has, however, been in country more than half time, to closely follow the expenditures for projects and see that the money is used where it is intended to be used; her travel and expenses are paid by herself or by adopting parents, not TSF.
This last
year TSF has been able to markedly expand its projects,
including building the new Roteang Orphanage complex, the Farm outreach
project for the 26 poorest families, with over 76 children, of Roteang
village, an English teaching program for 280 children, and a sewing/family
planning/child care program for adolescent girls, in addition to many
other projects, including a kitchen/dining area at Kampong Speu. Funds
were contributed by over 700 donors from all over the USA. In addition,
many committed people have raised money for TSF in many locations in and
out of New England. A large walkathon in New York city in June 2001 helped
a lot; a “loose change” campaign organized by families in Princeton,
Minnesota handed out 400 empty baby bottles and raised and was immensely
successful New Hampshire high school students have had bake sales; a first
grade in
Seattle raised money for fruit trees, a Unitarian church in Massachusetts
held an all day musical event, and a Cambodian restaurant on Cape Cod
donated all their food and services for an overflow crowd coming to see
slides and hear a talk about TSF. In Washington State, a group raised
money that funded a deep well, to provide the first truly drinkable water
for a small, poor, farm community; another group in Massachusetts raised
$400 to buy a diesel pump for irrigation.
TSF is not affiliated with any political or religious organization,
either in Cambodia or the USA. The Foundation is also not involved, either
procedurally or financially, with adoption activities by any agency.
We are very proud of our web site (www.sharingfoundation.org), designed
and maintained voluntarily by a professional web site designer.
Cambodia
is a country where one does not need to search for a project-
there is always a place where The Sharing Foundation can make a difference
in helping people help themselves. We would like to expand the English
teaching program, a proven route to better jobs. We would like to expand
the farm out reach program, so that more families can work on rented fields
to grow their own vegetables to eat and to sell surplus, thus markedly
improving their nutrition as well as their family economy. We see a large
need for expanding adolescent skills training, and its associated social
programs, especially family planning. The girls we have been working with
do not have even basic knowledge of anatomy or physiology, or the least
idea that they need not
produce a child a year, staring at age 17 or 18. Family planning in
Cambodia means abandonment of unexpected ,unaffordable babies- we would
like to see the decrease in need for orphanages for abandoned babies.
By adopting from The Sharing Foundation Orphanage at Roteang, you are
now part of the TSF family. We hope you have had time while you are here
to have visited some of the projects, at least some of the ones like the
farm, or the sewing project , or the village playground, or the local
English program in the Roteang school.
We would love it if you joined with us in our projects to give back to
the people of Cambodia. Many, many more children who will grow up here
and always live here are currently being affected by TSF projects than
the 60 or so children at the Roteang orphanage, of whom half approximately-
the healthy ones- will end up in American homes. We hope you will contact
us to be on the mailing list for the newsletter to follow the activities
and your Roteang orphanage, and will view the TSF web site when you get
home. We hope a few of you at least will become contributors, of ideas,
of suggestions, of money personally or through friends or family at Birthday
parties , showers or the like, or as organizers of a fund raiser, large
or small.
Sincerely,
Dr.Ly Srey Vyna, Roteang Orphanage Director
Dr Om Kim Sir, Director Outreach Programs
Nancy W Hendrie MD, President, TSF