Shaping Healthy Habits
We can’t educate a child who is hungry or sick. Good health begins with clean water, clean hands and clean teeth. Good habits formed early on ripple back to the family, and the community. We want to see our students learn what being healthy means.
Clean Water
For many of us, fresh clean water is a given. For others, it is a precious gift. We now have six micro-filtration systems in five of our schools. Our students and their families now enjoy more than 10,000 liters of clean drinking water every day.
Bright Smiles Bright Futures
This program aims to provide every student with three toothbrushes per year. After each school meal, the students are required to brush their teeth, with teachers on hand to demonstrate how to brush correctly and conduct lessons on good oral hygiene.
Caring for Cambodia now distributes over 17,000 toothbrushes per year. The next time you have a party or a lunch, ask each guest to bring along a new toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste.
Healthy Hands
Our life skills curriculum includes teaching the importance of hand washing. Soap socks, made by local villagers now hang by each water faucet to ensure students use clean water and soap when hand washing.
Vision Screening
Health care at CFC schools includes screening for vision problems. With generous support from and collaboration with International Medical Clinic, Singapore, CFC children are each administered a vision test to identify those who may need corrective treatment. Students identified as needing further evaluation are brought to the Eye Clinic at Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap. Here they receive appropriate treatment and eyeglasses.
Collection Campaigns
In order to run these programs successfully, Caring for Cambodia runs regular collection campaigns for Dental Hygiene Kits (toothpaste and toothbrush) and Hand Washing Kits (soap and washcloth).
Please refer to our Calendar of Giving for more information about what we are collecting this month.
