A home for Srey Lee

$3,000 isn’t a lot of money to change a whole family’s life, but that’s all it would take to build a new home which will allow a young girl living at Wat Opot Children's Community in rural Cambodia to return to her family and be reunited with her little brother, mother and grandmother. At Wat Opot, we try to reintegrate children back into families whenever possible, and building this new home is the best way we can do that for Srey Lee. We would love your help, and just $10 will help enormously.  The full story is below.


Srey Lee was born in 2004.  Five years later a little boy, Socheat, was added to the family and the little girl was no longer an only child.  In 2014, their parents divorced and Srey Lee’s now single mother had to go to work and was no longer able to take care of her children and her ailing mother, who lived with them. 

 
Through social services, the desperate mother found out about Wat Opot.  When the children came, Srey Lee was in the 5th grade and Socheat was in preschool.  Within 6 months the mother felt confident the grandmother could care for Socheat while she went to work. Unfortunately, there would not be enough money to keep Srey Lee in school nor sufficient care for the growing girl at home, so she continued to be loved and cared for by us while getting an education, in the hopes that the situation would improve.


It did. With help from her extended family, her mom was able to keep her house and land and they started to raise chickens and pigs for additional food and income. The property is adjacent to a river and, over time, the raised house started to sink on one side making it like a carnival fun house…but unlike briefly touring a fun house, the family had to live in this one.  Srey Lee used to joke when she went home on holidays, that if you got tired in her kitchen, then you could just roll into the bedroom to sleep, but - joking aside - it was a dangerous place for her elderly grandma and young children to live.


In this case, we would love to see Srey Lee back with her biological family, where she can help with the animal husbandry, care of her grandmother and be a present big sister to her cute little brother, but the only way this can happen is with the construction of a new house and financial aid for Srey Lee to continue going to high school.
 

Srey Lee’s mother now has the deed to the land in her name and has saved a bit of money, but not nearly enough to start on construction.  They have extended family nearby and can live with them during the construction of a new house.  We are hoping to fund this build by raising $3,000USD to cover all supplies and labor.  Anything above that amount will be put into an account at Wat Opot to be given monthly to the family to pay for Srey Lee’s continued education.

 
We would appreciate every dollar of help.


(In this connected world, the names have been changed (and faces distorted) to protect the privacy of the family.)