Recycable materials for a CCH sculpture

On Sunday I ran a workshop at CCH to create a sculpture for the forthcoming jewellery auction.

The idea was to create a piece from recyclable goods. The purpose of the sculpture is for people at the auction to donate their spare change towards CCH. 100 riel notes here are worth about 4 cents and so amount just like 1p and 2p coins in the UK.

I've got lots of 100 and 50 riel notes to get rid of and I'm sure many expats have a lot of them hanging around - So, the idea is that they intertwine/weave them into the sculpture. This also highlights how, although we may think of the notes as nothing, children at the dump will work hard for 100 riel (2 aluminium cans = 100 riel).

The kids had a lot of fun weaving, cutting and gluing. Then they got the idea of making clothes from the plastic and bracelets from the wool and had a lot of fun with that too!

A beautiful purple outfit!

A new arrival on the right handside was very enthusiastic despite the fact that she only arrived 2 days ago. She is from a province and had no one to look after her.

A new venture

Leaving Cambodia in April is going to be extremely difficult. We have adapted to life quite well here and most of the time have relished the experience. However, our links with Cambodia will not be broken - far from it. In fact we now have a new charity(!) that we have set up. We are currently doing research on the situation of children who live in prisons in Cambodia. The aim will be to establish a project that will provide these children with a safe and clean environment in which to live, free from violence, with access to education and to medical/social care. The project will be run by Cambodians but managed from the UK.

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