Topic

Action/person

Introduce KCF:

KCF was started by VSO volunteers and VAs to help poor children attend school. It can provide clothing, bikes, school supplies, rice, and medical help to children. It cannot give money to students.

Sarah and Jean will keep the fund in mind and help promote the fund when appropriate.

Update on Children:

All the 30 children supported last year have been supported again this year. Mairead’s village will need support next year. We need to get information on these children and enter it in the database and talk to the school director again.

Claire will follow up on the two children from Reksmeysangkrous school.

At and Charlene will see about Mairead’s village of children who have started attending school.

Finances:

We have $10,090 in the account. Hans has raised more money and will bring it next year.

We have to pay Sandy $41 for updating the website license (yearly cost)

We have to give Charlene receipts for this school year’s expenses.

We agree that the finances need to be more transparent.

Charlene and At will start database of all children and link to the finances. All receipts will now have to have the name of the child on the receipt.

Postcards:

We need to revisit the guesthouses and bookstore that sell postcards and make sure that the stock is kept up and collect money.

Claire and Charlene will visit the guesthouses and book store.

Website:

Sandy has taught At and Charlene how to update the website. The minutes have been updated and these minutes will also be posted.

At and Charlene will take and post photographs to improve the website.

T-Shirt:

At suggested making a KCF t-shirt. One design can be of Kampot or the Old Bridge. Another design can be a children’s drawing. We can have a contest for the t-shirt drawing. Claire suggests printing them in Phnom Penh.

At and Charlene will make a flyer to announce the t-shirt drawing contest. We will discuss deadlines and procedures. We will look into costs.

Database:

At would like to make an Access Database of all the children we help, with contact information for the school director and dates of visits. This will enable us to keep track of the kids so that we can continue to provide support and will enable us to better track expenses.

At and Charlene will build Access Database.

New members:

We need to recruit new members to the KCF, especially Khmer people. Claire and Charlene think that the village woman at Reksmeysangkrous would be good because she is involved in the community.

All of us will think about people to invite to the next meeting.

Disseminating information:

We have a lot of money and now we need to find children to support. Many school directors know about the fund but have not requested any support. Claire and Buntheng advertised the fund at an Open Day but that did not result in any new requests either.

Charlene and At will reprint the information sheet in Khmer and volunteers will bring it to school directors when they visit schools.

Lower secondary and Secondary students:

We discuss changing the constitution to include support for lower secondary and secondary students. There is a large drop-out rate of students, especially after 6^th grade and then again after 8^th grade because of the increasing costs of school. The price of learning increases at the higher grades. We discuss the problem of private classes. The classes are necessary for students to learn and cost a lot more than private primary classes. We would have to be careful on how we would fund this. The children in the families we help still need help in order to continue their studies. Their family situation does not change much, so this support would be crucial to getting them to complete their schooling.

We will review the constitution next time and discuss amending it.

We will ask other NGOs that provide scholarships how they do this and what sort of calculations they make for the scholarships for students in grades 7-12.

Next meeting:

We will have the next meeting when Hans is here in February so that we can all discuss more clearly about the direction of the fund’s support for students.

February—date to be determined in January