Tabitha Project

Janne Riskes of Tabitha.

Janne started Tabitha Cambodia in 1995 to support many poor people still suffering in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge. Janne works alongside the people in their villages to assist with generating income, providing water, building houses and other needed support.

Direct Aid will send building teams to Cambodia to build houses for homeless people in November 2005. Our main aim is to raise funds for Janne and her team to provide water and pumps.

The majority of poor Cambodian families do not have access to water and must travel on average 3kms to a well to access uncontaminated water. It can take up to three hours to walk to and from the well and queue with many others, and most families send out a family member at about 3 am to fetch enough water for the family's daily needs. Most families bathe just once or twice a week and the bath water is then used for washing clothes and cooking, washing dirty dishes after meals, resulting in skin infections, diarrhoea and other illness.

A pump or well installed within the village gives huge benefit. It provides access to clean water that sustains and saves human lives. Diarrhoea and infection reduce dramatically within the villages, home vegetable gardens thrive and the permanent availability of water from the wells spares the long and arduous daily hike for water.  When rains fail, pumped water can be used to irrigate fields.

Tabitha Cambodia and Direct Aid Inc. are committed to help break the poverty cycle to enable the Cambodian people to support themselves. Your full donation will be for specific purposes, such as providing a well or pump – vital support for village life – for just $A120.00.