Maryknoll Project: Keeping Kids in School

Home Visits to Poor Families

2 March 2002

Jim Noonan, a Maryknoll priest, started Seedling of Hope, an AIDS program helping people with AIDS, but only the poorest, those with no resources and usually no family ties. As the project progressed, it was noted how many children were left orphans as their parents died of AIDS. Education is a tremendous need in Cambodia, and these children, already impoverished by the loss of their parents, also are stigmatized by society as tainted by AIDS, so a special project was set up to enable them to attend school and get at least that advantage in a social setting which offers them little else. These pictures are from a visit to five families by Jim Noonan, Vuthy and Phalla, two field workers for the project, and Charlie Dittmeier.

Seven children and their mother with AIDS Her husband died of AIDS. She is also infected with it. But this mother struggles to get her seven children into school to help them in the future. 10,000 riel (US$2.50) a week keeps three kids in school and helps feed the whole bunch. The mother sews two blankets a week with donated scraps to supplement their income by another 10,000 riel.

A father with three children His wife died of tuberculosis six months ago and left this father with four young children. The Missionaries of Charity wanted to take the newborn child but the father insisted he would keep the kids together. The baby died three months later. Now the children are waiting places in the government schools nearby.

A rooftop family Jim and Phalla and Vuthy greet a family with two older children living in a rooftop shack. Again the husband has already died of AIDS. Jim would like to get the older boy into the Don Bosco (Salesian) technical school but his math grades may not be good enough.

n AIDS mother with three children This mother has AIDS herself but after her husband died of AIDS, she was sexually abused in her rural village so Maryknoll arranged for her to move to this safe place with her three children.

Poor and crippled by polio VooTee is a common sight around Phnom Penh, a small man with tiny, useless, polio-twisted legs who hawks hammocks and postcards from his three-wheel, hand-powered tricycle. He lives on a wooden bed platform with his wife and three children in a shed with three other families of men who pedal the bicycle rickshaws known as "cyclos." There are no walls, just four platforms under a roof with four or five dogs and as many chickens underfoot.

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Return to Charlie Dittmeier's home page

Jim Noonan, a Maryknoll priest, started Seedling of Hope, an AIDS program helping people with AIDS, but only the poorest, those with no resources and usually no family ties. As the project progressed, it was noted how many children were left orphans as their parents died of AIDS. Education is a tremendous need in Cambodia, and these children, already impoverished by the loss of their parents, also are stigmatized by society as tainted by AIDS, so a special project was set up to enable them to attend school and get at least that advantage in a social setting which offers them little else. These pictures are from a visit to five families by Jim Noonan, Vuthy and Phalla, two field workers for the project, and Charlie Dittmeier.
	Her husband died of AIDS. She is also infected with it. But this mother struggles to get her seven children into school to help them in the future. 10,000 riel (US$2.50) a week keeps three kids in school and helps feed the whole bunch. The mother sews two blankets a week with donated scraps to supplement their income by another 10,000 riel.
	His wife died of tuberculosis six months ago and left this father with four young children. The Missionaries of Charity wanted to take the newborn child but the father insisted he would keep the kids together. The baby died three months later. Now the children are waiting places in the government schools nearby.
	Jim and Phalla and Vuthy greet a family with two older children living in a rooftop shack. Again the husband has already died of AIDS. Jim would like to get the older boy into the Don Bosco (Salesian) technical school but his math grades may not be good enough.
	This mother has AIDS herself but after her husband died of AIDS, she was sexually abused in her rural village so Maryknoll arranged for her to move to this safe place with her three children.
	VooTee is a common sight around Phnom Penh, a small man with tiny, useless, polio-twisted legs who hawks hammocks and postcards from his three-wheel, hand-powered tricycle. He lives on a wooden bed platform with his wife and three children in a shed with three other families of men who pedal the bicycle rickshaws known as "cyclos." There are no walls, just four platforms under a roof with four or five dogs and as many chickens underfoot.