News

Happy New Year’s everyone. May 2011 be filled with the blessings that you have brought to so very many. For myself, the new years has started well. I am back at work with very little restrictons, doing what I am meant to do. That is so very good.

Tagged: house building, Janne Ritskes, school building

Well we are almost at the end of 2010 and it feels as if it has been another busy year for Tabitha. We will be doing a summary of the funding efforts once the accounts are finalised early in 2011, but I just want to take the opportunity to thank everyone.

Tagged: president

It's Christmas time again and the excitement is building. For Miriam and I the excitement is tenfold for after five more sleeps my journey with breast cancer will be over ‐ well, not completely, but the intensive treatment of the cancer will be finished and we can go home. The prognosis looks good and the daunting process is no longer so daunting. We are so very thankful for that.

Tagged: hospital, Janne Ritskes

It's been a hard couple of days for all of us at Tabitha and for Cambodia at large. On Monday evening a stampede claimed the lives of 378 Cambodians and injured more than 700 people. The news leQ all of us bewildered and worried as we waited to find out news from all our staff and workers and families that we work with. Two of our staff lost young relaitves from the countryside ‐ both were young women, one 19 years of age and one 23 years of age. These young women, like so many young people in Cambodia travelled to Phnom Penh to celebrate the Water Fesitval.

Tagged: Janne Ritskes

This past week saw the flooding in Cambodia finally receding and highways open so that I could travel. A few weeks ago was the beginning of the new school year here in Cambodia. Like all things, education for the children is an education for all of us at Tabitha. When we started building schools in our communities several years ago, we were not aware of how few of our children actually attend school. For primary school children, about 20% attend at least two years of primary school ‐ sometimes three in their lifetime ‐ at secondary level this drops to less than 8%.

Tagged: Janne Ritskes

This week is Pchum Ban Festival in Cambodia. Pchum Ban is equivalent to the Christian holiday of Christmas in significance for the people here. It is the time that Cambodians have to honor and remember their parents and grandparents who have passed away. There are very specific ceremonies that need to be completed in the 15 days prior to the actual Pchum Ban day itself. The belief is that people must honor their parents/ grandparents by going to seven different pagodas and bringing gifts of food to the monks. On Pchum Ban day itself, everyone must bring a variety of cooked foods plus a variety of dry foods to the pagoda before 11 o'clock in the morning. At that time, all offerings must be completed and the monks sit down to eat.

Tagged: Janne Ritskes

It's been a remarkable week. Every so oKen I get to see the fruit of what I have done. Back in 1995, I and June Cunningham took over Cambodia House, an orphanage that had been abandoned by the person who established it. We had 32 children from under 1 to six years of age. As Tabitha was just beginning and Cambodia was sVll very unstable, we decided that running an orphanage was not what was best for the children and so we started a process of adopVon. Over the next two years we placed all the children in adopVve families around the world.

Tagged: Janne Ritskes