A New Life Orphanage

Help Us Build a Home for Orphans Whose Parents Have Died of HIV-AIDS

During the Pol Pot period, many children were left parentless as nearly two million people perished from starvation, torture and exhaustion under the cruel regime of the Khmer Rouge. Nowadays there are fewer genuine orphans but countless poor children whose parents are unable to care for them and they inhabit most of the country’s orphanages. A growing number of children, however, are becoming orphans as their parents die from HIV/AIDS. These children—some at the age of 13 or 14—have suddenly become the breadwinners for their siblings and aged grandparents. They have lost their childhood.

To give them a loving home and hopeful future A New Life Orphanage has been established. The orphanage is located on farmland on the outskirts of Phnom Penh off the highway toward Saigon.

The executive director is Mme. Prak Savang, who has managed the prestigious Khmer-French-Hungarian Friendship Orphanage Center in Kandal, operated by the Ministry of Social Affairs, for the past three decades. In anticipation of directing her own orphanage someday, Savang purchased a small plot of land where she has now realized her dream.The children here are physically healthy and not afflicted by HIV/AIDS. They will attend a local public school and benefit from the facilities of the Bright Future Kids Home ( www.brightfuturekids.org) next door. There they can learn computer skills, English, the arts of music and dance and participate in sports with the "bright kids," academically-talented children gathered from all over Cambodia, who are being groomed to be the nation's future leaders. We will be training them in information technology skills to become teachers at our rural schools with out career in computer communications.

Foster parents can sponsor a child here for $40 a month or $480 a year. The orphanage is also accepting donations for equipment (such as a generator, bus, musical instruments, books for the library) and operational costs. Three buildings, housing a dormitory, dining facility and administrative office have been funded by Mr. Douglas Hodge and Mrs. Kylie Schuyler Hodge.

Donations are tax-deductible in the US and Japan.

For information on how you can support the orphanage, please contact us at: bernie@media.mit.edu.

How to donate

We accept donations through four methods: check, bank wire, PayPal, or credit card. Tax-deductible donations from the US should go towards American Assistance for Cambodia, an authorized 501(c)3. Tax-deductible donations from Japan should go towards Japan Relief for Cambodia through the Keidanren’s Council for Better Cooperate Citizenship (CBCC). For information on obtaining a tax deduction, please Contact Us.

Please indicate if the donation is unrestricted or designated for the sponsorship of an orphan or a specific purspose.

Checks: Checks can be mailed to: Bernard Krisher, American Assistance for Cambodia, 4-1-7-605 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo (150-0012) Japan

Bank Wire: Please send dollar funds to the account of: American Assistance for Cambodia in the Ridgewood Savings Bank, Queens Blvd. and 108 Street, Forest Hills, N.Y. 11375. Account number: 648899; Tracking number: 226071033. Please advise us by e-mail, fax or mail when you have transferred funds and indicate that it is a donation for A New Life Orphanage.

PayPal: A donor can give secure dollar donations using PayPal:
1. Go to http://www.paypal.com and register an account
2. Once you are logged into a PayPal account, click on “Send Money.” Enter in the email bernie@media.mit.edu and the amount you wish to donate.

Credit Card: Please email name, address, and credit card number and expiration date to bernie@media.mit.edu. We accept Mastercard, Visa and American Express.