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On December 24, 2006, the Chicago Tribune ran a beautiful story about ANDC. It told the history of the organization and about the great commitment made by Lauren & Bill Smith. It told of the dream they both had to one day open a shelter for the children. The shelter would provide a clean, safe environment with three meals a day, clean water, bathrooms and a well-lit place to study their lessons.

This dream became possible after the Tribune story ran. We received donations and child sponsorship offers for more than 150 kids! The many kind people who sent in checks to ANDC were now mostly strangers to us so we quickly realized that our previous way of trying to help these children was no longer going to work. We had to find a new way to handle many more children and insure that every penny now donated could be accurately tracked and documented. We quickly came to the conclusion that the only way to properly insure this was to centrally locate all the children and hire a qualified staff to monitor all aspects of the children’s lives and our expenditures.

Joe O’Neil (a long-time friend from the Chicago Bulls) and his wife Susan offered to help us and joined our board last January. In February Joe and I traveled to Cambodia to research a location and review the practicalities of opening a center. We met with lawyers and government officials on the legal aspects and visited all the sponsored families, explaining our new direction and asking their permission for their child to live in this new “center”.

We toured orphanages, schools and children’s relief centers asking questions and getting ideas regarding the best way to operate our center. We also hired Cary Telander, a recent graduate of Dartmouth (who was living in Phnom Penh), to be our new center manager and facilitate our preparations toward the opening of the shelter. We had to choose a building, negotiate a lease, hire a staff, furnish and supply it to house and feed almost 50 children who had never even used a toilet or shower. All from 10,000 miles away! We were scared, but committed. We called Cary almost daily and slowly but surely overcame many obstacles and readied the house for occupancy.

Joe and I traveled to Cambodia again in July. More children were selected, and meetings with their parents were held. Many trips were made to the markets to buy supplies and furnishings for the house including a refrigerator, television, washing machine and computer. Custom bunk beds and cubbies for the bedrooms were delivered and installed. We were finally ready to start moving the children into their new home. It was emotional, gratifying, and a unforgettable experience to watch their faces as one by one the children marched (with all their worldly belongings on their back) into their new residence. Their excitement was contagious and emotional; there wasn’t a dry eye to be found. They were given new clothes, school uniforms and assigned bedrooms and beds. My daughters, Srey Na, Salim, and Srey Nak were on hand to assist our efforts, giving lessons to the children on how to use a toilet and shower. The children met the staff and received orientation about the center. In subsequent weeks there were all enrolled in both Khmer and English schools nearby the facility for the fall semester. We hired a local teacher to come in daily during the summer to tutor and prepare each child for the upcoming school year.

It’s been exciting, gratifying and a huge learning experience for us. Our progress and success, while remarkable in many aspects, has been painfully slow in the area of sponsor communication and in matching children with specific sponsors. We wanted to operate the new center for a period of time to work out all the “kinks” with the facility, staff and the children. Though very limited, there have been a few cases where children have left the center after a few weeks because of problems with their parents. For this and other reasons we felt it would be best for the children and sponsors to let everything stabilize before pairing families together. We now have 46 children living in the center and an English speaking staff that will facilitate accurate and timely communication between the children and the sponsors. We only now feel we can responsibly assign the children with their new sponsor.

As I mentioned earlier, we have donations for more than 150 children and currently have space to house and support only 46, so we will assign the children in the order that we received the donations. We will also post our exact expenses for the operation of the facility on our website. Basically it cost approximately $1200 a year for each child to live at the center, attend English and Khmer school including all clothes, uniforms, school fees and supplies. (This also includes the salaries of our cook, nanny, security guard, manager and administrator). We do not want to ask the donors for more money beyond the $600 a year sponsorship fees we initially requested, so we are supplementing the $600 deficit per child with “general/shelter” donations we received. We are hosting a few presentations this fall and winter, which hopefully will raise sufficient funding for this facility and a second center which we hope to open next year. We have found another house to convert and hope to have it open by early summer 2008. This will allow us to support another 50 or 60 children, bringing our total to over 100.

While we certainly appreciate everyone’s concern and donations for these needy children, it is very important to us not to waste a penny of anyone’s donation. Sponsoring new children outside the center has become too risky and is of limited benefit to the children without daily supervision of the monthly payments. It’s no longer practical to do. We have learned a lot these past 10 months and we’re sure that our new direction is the most beneficial for the children and the sponsors. We pride ourselves in the fact that every penny of your donation is spent honestly and prudently. None of us on the board of ANDC take a salary from the foundation.