My Special Necklace

Check out my new necklace that my husband bought for me this week!

He just returned from his 31st trip to Cambodia where People for Care and Learning provides "care and learning" opportunities for orphans, widows, and impoverished people all over Southeast Asia.  I wanted to share with you a special necklace he brought back this time from the "garbage dump community" in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  This is the poorest of the poor community, where the people make their living from things they find in the trash.

Here is the ingenious young lady who made my necklace

She makes these necklaces from foil candy wrappers and paper clips. The foil wrappers are cut and folded around each paper clip, no glue or anything else holding it together. Ingenious!

This is her home (above) and the hammock is where she and her baby sleep each night.  The necklaces are her only support for her and her newborn child.

She gets her materials from the garbage dump where she lives. You can see the little girls below adding candy wrappers to her collection.  We ordered several hundred necklaces from her and our PCL partners in Cambodia will ship them to us so let me know if you would like to have one as well!

Below is a picture of the new homes that PCL is helping the Cambodian government to build to help remove these families from the Garbage Dump Community. Each section is a home for a family and costs $1,000 to build.  This past week my husband took $25,000 to purchase 25 homes in this new community of 300 homes.  We hope to be able to purchase all 300 with the help of donors.  You can see from the living conditions above that this will make a extreme difference in the lives of so many people. Just to have shelter from rains, storms, animals and to have a door to lock and provide safety as well is priceless!

 Several years ago, PCL built this beautiful children's home in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  Here is my husband with several of the children in their school uniforms.

And just a short while ago we built two large barges to float on the Tonle Sap Lake providing medical care, preschool, classes, and all types of humanitarian aid to the several million Vietnamese refugees who live on the lake.

On this past trip we were fortunate to have our nephew, Edward, on the trip as well among many other wonderful people who have a heart for helping others around the world! One of our previous travelers came back and installed $40,000 worth of solar equipment on the boats so we could sanitize the water and make ice among many other things.

Thanks Rudy!!!

There is more than I could possibly tell you about what People for Care and Learning (PCL) does in Southeast Asia. Check out our website for more info.  www.peopleforcare.org