Update from Luang Prabang Orphanage.

Just heard from Luang Prabang Orphanage and the news isn't good.

The Entrance to the Orphanage.
And it's in Laos, by the way;
one of the poorest countries on earth.

The economic downturn has meant that fewer tourists are traveling to Laos and thus fewer people are using Ruth's book exchange and therefore there's a significant reduction in the money going to support the children at the orphanage.

One of the Orphans.
Such a little sweetie, isn't she?

It was barely enough even in the good times, and it's not anywhere near enough now.

If you read my post "Luang Prabang Orphanage For Michael" from January 5th this year, you'll know all about this set up - because our good friend German Michael asked that we check it out for him so he knew it was genuine so he could recommend it to various friends in Hong Kong, who were then looking for some project to fund-raise for, which turned out to be four new roofs for this orphanage - and that I shared the report with all of you who read my blog.


This request for your support is all genuine, folks. No scam happening here. You know me, Denise-the-Idiot, and hopefully you trust me ... and think me too stupid to be involved in anything underhand and sneaky. And you know Aussie Christine ...

The One and Only
Aussie Christine.

... who frequently features in these posts, and, if you go back to the earliest posts for this year, you'll know all about Christine's friend Ruth living there in Luang Prabang, trying to raise the money needed for the kiddies at the impoverished orphanage in a country where the corrupt government takes all the international donations.

Truly, folks, that's the reason why the money is all handled here in HK, to keep it out of the hands of corrupt government officials. Not anywhere near a scam, so please don't be cynical about it.

These are only a few of the kiddies
we're talking about here.

But here's the report for 2009 from the Orphanage:

As at December 2009, the Luang Prabang Government Orphanage School has 517 resident children, ranging in age from about 5 years old and up. This is an increase in numbers of more than 50 children this year.

Our role is to raise money in order to provide the children with items such as warm clothes, medicines, personal health items and extra food.

There are no administrative costs in the work we do. All coordination, purchasing, delivery, distribution, plus any other required activities in Luang Prabang is done by Ruth and her family. The web page, PayPal account and Thank You Certificates are all handled by Chris who is based in Hong Kong. Every dollar / kip raised goes to providing for the children.

We never just give cash - we always spend time discussing with the Director the needs of the orphanage and the children - and we then purchase and deliver it. Often this involves organizing every child in the orphanage to individually receive his or her set of supplies… as you can imagine, it’s a time-consuming task! But we need to do this to ensure that every child receives what they require and that no one misses out for any reason.

Please note that this year the amount of provisions we have been able to give the children has been much less than previous years. Tourism has been down by almost 50 percent and people are watching their cash-flow more closely. So we haven’t had enough money to meet our goals every month. For example, our November delivery was only 1 cake of soap, 1 tin of fish, one packet of noodles, two school notebooks and one pencil per child. It came to $US800.

Please tell your friends and family about the orphanage and its web site… maybe they would like to donate instead of giving gifts to each other for Christmas?

See http://www.lao-kids.org/Newsletter.htm for more details.

To everyone who has helped our work with the orphanage this year.. a HUGE thank you. And many good wishes for a safe, peaceful and prosperous 2010.