Author: Charles Dittmeier

Out of the Office

“Out of the office” can have a different meaning from usual for Prak Soeun, the DDP Program Manager. Our new office building has a nice second-floor porch and Soeun often uses it, instead of his office, when he is working his way through piles of papers.

Protecting the Children—2

This morning Chanthea (C) was to visit several of the sites connected with the Job Training Project which Caritas Australia funds. Before they started off, he met with Lika (L), our child protection compliance officer, and Sokly.
In the afternoon, Chanthea and Sokly drove to Kandal Province to visit Ratanak, a DDP-trained barber. Two years ago Caritas Australia featured Ratanak in a video they used for education and fund-raising in Australia. Chanthea took advantage of the visit to get his hair cut. Ratanak is a real success story.

Protecting the Children

(L-R:) Nou Chanthea, Keat Sokly, Lika, Prak Soeun, Russ Brine

In today’s world, all international donors are very concerned about the child protection policies of the partner organizations that receive their money. DDP’s donors are no exception, and today Nou Chanthea (L), the representative from Caritas Australia, met with DDP management to discuss new forms and new requirements established by the government of Australia which gives money to Caritas which gives it to us. Caritas Australia is especially careful concerning child protection but so is Maryknoll Cambodia so today Chanthea just explained the new form we will need for reporting at the end of the year.

Not much business…

I have been planning to get a haircut at the DDP barber shop where we train young deaf men. The road–terrible before–is even worse now because of construction on the road, and I could barely get to our barber shop.

Here is our trainee crew at the barber shop and you can see why they have given few haircuts the last few days. I could barely get there with my bicycle. I couldn’t ride it but had to push it through the mud and soft dirt.
A hundred meters beyond the barber shop is the reason for the mud and disruption: a road crew is installing a large new sewer line that everyone hopes will eliminate the constant flooding during the rainy season. The red wooden building in the background is the site of the former Maryknoll village health and education project run by Sr. Regina Pellicore.

Maryknoll Immersion Trip

For the past week, Maryknoll Cambodia has hosted what we call an immersion trip, bringing a group from usually the United States and exposing them to the language and culture and people of Cambodia to help them get an idea of mission in this country.

On one of their first days in Cambodia, the group of fourteen men and women came to the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme to learn about what we are doing with the deaf people of Cambodia.
Today the group came to join Maryknoll Cambodia for a liturgy and for a dinner together, just to give everyone more chance to talk.
Most of the immersion tour group will be returning to the United States tomorrow so this was a low-key, not stressful way to spend their last evening in Cambodia.