The PPSC Rose Medical Elective Program is newly established although Rose has had experience in providing a medical elective program in the past. Our star Surgeon, Dr Nous Sarom has moved to become the Head of Surgery at the Preah Mettokelea Surgical Centre (PPSC) at the Military Hospital in Phnom Penh. Dr Sarom has had a long history with Rose and we have adapted our program to follow this wonderful surgeon and teacher. The Program is now being administered by Ms Sophak Chim who has excellent organisational skills and fantastic written English. She is managing our complicated schedule and ensuring that students receive communication from Cambodia upon receiving their email enquiries. Obviously being a new program there will be teething problems but we hope that the program will evolve to be a leading elective program in Cambodia, especially with the assistance of great feedback from the students! … read more…
Category Archives: Rose News
Sight-saving truck for Cambodia: with love from NZ !
Rose Charities NZ has donated the funds for a truck to Rose Cambodia Eye/Sight Centre for their outreach program. Collecting for the truck was primarily orchestrated by Mr Mike Webber, Optometrist and Rose Laureate 2009, of Wanganui who worked tirelessly to see the project through. In Mach 2012 a fundraser was held (
http://www.wanganuichronicle.co.nz/news/truck-in-sight-after-eye-fundraiser/1293047/) which hosted over 110 people and, thanks to the Wanganui attendees, raised over $NZ5000. The remainder was donated with huge generosity by a private NZ Foundation which specifically targets international projects which have outstanding cost effectiveness (as the Eye Centre does) .
The Rose Cambodia Sight Centre / Eye Clinc has now been operating since 1997, some 15 years (at the time of writing). It has treated well over 100,000 Cambodians the majority of who have been extremely poor, giving them free or low cost blindness preventing treatments or restoring sight mainly through cataract operations.
Many of the techniques for low cost eye surgery have historically been thanks to great New Zealanders such as Ray Avery or Fred Hollows so the centre carries on a a long and distinguished NZ history
Rose Charities New Zealand’s relationship with the Cambodia Sight Centre was initiated by John Veale (Optometrist Christchurch) in the year 2000 who then introduced Mike Webber and Dr David Sabiston (retired). The three have spent over a decade working with Drs Hang (clinic co founder) and Natalia Vra suppling materials, equipment, and most importantly of all, their considerable expertise to help bring the clinic to the leading eye Centre it is today in Cambodia.
In recent years, outreach programs for village level screening and eye care promotion have played an increasingly important role. Some of the roads to the villages become almost impassable in the wet season so a strong vehicle is needed, both for access and to be able to return patients to the clinic.
The truck is a fantastic gift, so needed: it will be pivotal in the continuation and expansion of delivery of high quality eye care to poor Cambodians. Thank you Wanganui and other generous donors !
To school by JET (the Rose JET Fund )
While watching his dad struggling with a complex grant application for child education, his son asked why it was so difficult. His father told him that it was so difficult finding the ‘novel approaches’ the donors were looking for, explaining that so many grants now wanted to be new-thinking and different’ . His don looked confused “Whats that got to do with going to school” he said….
Bingo ! KISSS ! ‘Keep it Simple, just Send kids to School !’
The media nowadays try to get the stories which are different, unusual, sensational. Many grant panels are pulled by this process. Understandably they want the publicity (helps they themselves get needed donations). Organizations making light bulbs out of Coke bottles, computers made of of tin-cans etc attract attention.
While these fascinating projects have their place, the fact is, while of little media ‘wow’ , in the developing world, kids want, but huge numbers cant afford, to go to school. More often than not the schools are there, the kids simply cant access them for want of the pitifully small amount of money, perhaps $50 per year which is needed to support the school.
In many cases the actual school building exists (organizations sometimes build, run the school for a while then move on) and there is are teachers available who will work for the barest minimum.
The Jet-Fund is aimed at helping creating a jet-stream of kids to be able to fulfill their dreams of education to help them fly into successful and happy futures. At the moment the fund works very closely with the K2K program(s) in Sri Lanka, though it is being expanded into other parts of Asia and into Africa too.
The fund is administered by an advisory panel of school-children (currently UK) overseen by one or more members of the Rose Charities International Council. No administration costs are taken at the donor country end, though a small percentage (up to 10% absolute maximum) is permitted at the recipient end to ensure proper screening and structuring (as can be imagined demand is colossal and far far outweighs the funding available)
If you’d like to become an ‘Education Jetsetter’ please contact jetset@rosecharities.org , donation page , or DONATE DIRECTLY (via UK site) Note: enter ‘for JET Fund in ‘notes to the Organization’ at the end of the process
Any donation welcomed (however small); or select a specific level,
Jetsetter – Economy: $50 per year (1 kids to school)
Jetsetter – Business: $100 per year (2 kids to school)
Jetsetter – First Class $300 per year (6 kids to school)
Jetsetter – Exec suite $500 per year (10 kids to school)
Jetsetter – Private jet $1000 per year (20 kids to school) ( Private ROSE-Jet registration allocated.. ie. RJET2 < 2, or more,’1′ is already taken ..yippee!> )