Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world
Each month we have a birthday celebration for the staff of DDP born in that month. Yesterday we had a celebration for January and February. For some reason we couldn’t hold the usual celebration in January so we combined it with the February event.
Following the graduations in Phnom Penh on Christmas Day and in Kampong Cham Province on Boxing Day, we had graduations in Kampot Province on December 27th. Click here for photos from the day.
Christmas Day saw the graduation of our Education Project students in Phnom Penh. The next day we had graduation for our students in Kampong Cham Province. Click here to see pictures from the ceremony.
We don’t celebrate Christmas at the Deaf Development Programme because this Buddhist country makes no connection between Christmas and the birth of Jesus and we don’t want to introduce the commercialization of Christmas and Santa Claus into the culture. But today we had an unplanned Christmas party thanks to the generosity of the landlady of our DDP office building. Click here to see what happened.
Several years ago, Cambodia started to develop a social security system for the welfare and protection of its citizens. It was implemented just three or four years ago with the introduction of a scheme to care for workers injured on the job, what would be called workmen’s compensation in the United States. This year a second phase is being rolled out, a healthcare plan; and a third phase, old age pensions will be introduced a few years from now.
Because the plan is relatively new and not well understood, an official from the National Social Security Fund came to Maryknoll today to speak to representatives of the Khmer employees of Maryknoll’s six projects.
Today was basically a travel day. We left the retreat center after breakfast, made a stop at the big market in Sihanoukville, and then headed north to Phnom Penh and points beyond (for the Kampong Cham team). Click here to see the pictures.
Day Three was spent half at the center and half at the beach. Click here to see more of what we did.
This full day was spent at the retreat center in Sihanoukville. Click here to see what happened on Day Two.
This year the DDP Annual Staff Retreat was held in Kampong Som Province on the southern Cambodian coast. Click here for Tuesday, Day 1.
Tomorrow the whole staff from the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme heads to the Catholic center in Sihanoukville on the southern coast of Cambodia for a four-day staff retreat or conference. We’ll be there till our return on Friday. I hope I’m in a building that has an Internet connection so I can post updates about the goings-on there.