I wanted to give you all a quick update before getting into more specific details.

• YAMEN Departures: In my last post I shared that Moudy, our volunteer from Indonesia, made it home safely. Last week Jonathan and Victor, our volunteers from Kenya, made it home safely. There were a lot of COVID-19 challenges to navigate but, at last, we found a flight and they made it home.
• New School: When we arrived last year we had to decide – quickly – what school to send the girls to. We stayed with the International School of Phnom Penh, which is where the previous volunteers had sent their children, but after being here a year we had the time to explore other options and see what was the best fit for us. The girls started at their new school, The Giving Tree, last week.
• New House: On a similar note, when we arrived last year we had to decide – quickly – if we were going to move a couple of months after arriving or renew the house lease for another year. We decided to renew the lease and that was absolutely the right decision. We had our share of crisis situations this first year and moving during that would have been…not wise. But, now that we’ve been here a year, we had the time to look at options and are moving into a house that’s a better fit for our family.
• Peace Grants: We’ve been pursuing a number of different peace grants but haven’t had success yet. One was a research grant on collecting participant feedback from past peace projects – an interesting idea considering we have peace projects going back 30 years! Unfortunately we didn’t get it but hopefully we laid groundwork for the future. We’re now working with a coalition of peace organizations in hopes of connecting with a UNDP grant on peacebuilding. Here’s hoping!
• COVID-19: Here’s my short summary; Cambodia has managed to control COVID-19 and things are slowly returning to normal, albeit with lots of hand sanitizing and temperature taking stations. There was a two month period where everyone was wearing masks. In Phnom Penh, I’d estimate that 98-99% of people were wearing masks and following the other guidelines. Then, after the brief lockdown around the cancelled Khmer New Year, things started to go back to normal. I’ll do a longer post on the nuances of this but, basically, Cambodia has emerged as a COVID-19 success story (on the public health side of things). The economic situation is more difficult.
• Siem Reap Vacation: After four months of staying in the house or close by, we went on our first vacation of 2020 to Siem Reap province. There’s a lot to share here but the quick summary is that Angkor War and the other temples were almost completely empty. It was a delight to explore them with the girls without being with hundreds of other tourists.
• Primary Education Evaluation: Our rural primary education is up for evaluation this year. We’ve did a lot of work early this year figuring out how to survey students and conduct focus groups in a COVID-19 sensitive way.
• New Peace Coordinators: Our new Peace Coordinators, Rory and Marcia, are in Pennsylvania at the moment waiting for Visas but we’re moving forward with a plan to get them here. If all goes well we hope to have them arrive in September. This is a big deal for us as all of our long term volunteers left between February and March. Clivia, Rory, and Marcia are the start of our new set of long term volunteers and will be with us for, lord willing, three years.
• Inbound SALT and YAMEN: We are preparing for the new class of SALT and YAMEN participants who are arriving in October. There’s a lot of logistics to figure out around travel and Visas. Especially for the YAMEN participants who do not have a Cambodian embassy in country.
• 2021 SALT and YAMEN Placements: We’ve also started to prepare for the class after that this one with some new positions in the countryside. The new placements we’re looking are a school, an orphanage, and a rural disability program. We had a wonderful hospitality placement at a eco-tourism social enterprise in Kratie province but sadly COVID-19 put it out of business. Having lived in the countryside, I’m very excited to provide these short term volunteers an opportunity to experience rural life. Hopefully they’ll work out.
• Administration: We’ve kept busy with lots of policy, finance, and report work. I won’t bore you with the details but it’s been good to update policies and then translate them into Khmer for the local partners and staff. There have also been many new laws put into effect since COVID-19 broke out and we’ve been making adjustments to stay in compliance with local law.