Emergency food aid reaches our desperate Oddar Meanchey families

I am so thrilled to be able to share that our dedicated project team in Cambodia have finally been able to get desperately needed emergency food aid to many hundreds of families in the remote northern province of Oddar Meanchey.

This comes in the wake of months of uncertainty when families were evacuated into very substandard camps in the centre of the country as war broke out on the border with Thailand, with scores of soldiers on both sides killed and widespread damage inflicted to public infrastructure and private property.

In recent weeks families have been able to return to their homes and our school in OM has reopened, but we've only just been able to secure enough food and safe transit for the emergency food aid program to occur.

It was very much a two-pronged initiative. Firstly hundreds of families descended on our school to receive an impromptu nutritious meal, bags of rice, spices and sauce during a special event that was even attended by local government officials who expressed deep gratitude for the support the villagers received. For more remote families, our director Pastor Abe and his team, took to often flooded outlying tracks and went door to door delivering many more tonnes of rice to families who really had their backs to the wall.

With the usual avenues to employment over the border in Thailand cut-off back in early July, these families have been really struggling to put any sort of food on the table and some of the stories our teams heard were very distressing indeed.

A massive shout out needs to go to our generous supporters who dug deep when we put out the appeal for donations for the emergency aid program. I can't begin to describe to you what a profound effect it has had on these struggling families.

As pleasing as it is to finally get this food aid into Oddar Meanchey, the enormity of the situation has virtually depleted our allocated funds in this first round of support, so if you think you would like to be involved in the next rice run hopefully in about a month from now we would love to hear from you.

We would love for you to consider partnering with us in an array of great projects across two of Cambodia's poorest provinces by making a tax deductible donation today (or any day). You can contribute directly into our Australian working account ‘Supporting Cambodia’ BSB: 015-600 Account: 1967 91878 (Please include your name and email address in the transaction for a tax receipt) or with a credit card on our donation page.