Hi, and welcome to pedals&pennies – a blog that will follow three Savings & Loans staff as we help with developing credit unions in Cambodia.
I’m Patrick Gibson, Savings & Loans’ Media and Communications Coordinator. In September this year I’ll be travelling to Cambodia with the Credit Union Foundation of Australia (CUFA) to help with their development work in the country.
Myself, Fran Kouwenhoven, our Corporate Social Responsibility Consultant and Mark Halliday from our Organisational Development area will be heading over for the program, which includes a 350km bike ride and some hands-on work with local groups.
We’ll be joining credit union staff from around Australia to help deliver financial literacy projects in local schools and see first the impact these relatively simple projects can have on people’s lives.
We’re also raising money to keep the programs running – the group aims to raise $45,000 in the lead-up to the trip, and we’ll be tackling a bike ride of over 350km before we start delivering the programs.
Now, I’m not exactly in tip-top physical shape, so riding a bike for six days (one day’s around 100km) isn’t exactly going to be a walk in the park.
The programs
It’s not all getting sore from sitting on a bike all day; we’ll also be helping with some really valuable and important financial literacy programs. Kids are encouraged to start savings plans and develop a basic understanding of money - it's a hangover from the days of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, where financial institutions, currency and money in general were banned.
The kids are encouraged to save money for really basic things like new school uniforms or even helping out with new equipment for a family farm. Most of the kids manage to save the equivalent of $2 a month.
For more information on the projects, have a look at the CUFA website.
Fundraising
Like I said, there's a physical challenge in the trip, where we’ll be cycling over 350km through the country along roads that aren't exactly sealed and ready for heavy traffic. We’ve been told that we’ll probably end up pushing our bikes through the mud some afternoons.
To help get us fit for the journey and raise some much-needed money for the work, we’ll be holding a ‘ride-a-thon’ in Savings & Loans’ Flinders St branch on Wednesday, 6 August. The three of us will be seeing just how far we can ride stationary bikes between 9am and 5pm.
If you’d like to make a donation to the work CUFA’s doing in Cambodia, there are several options:
• Donate using PayPal on the CUFA website, where you can get a tax receipt;
• Transfer money into a special Savings & Loans account 04322730 (our BSB is 805-023). You won’t be able to get a tax receipt for this; or
• Call me on (08) 8305 8331.
Mark, Fran and I will be regularly updating this blog in the lead-up to the trip, and as often as we can while we’re over there. If you have any questions, let us know.
Patrick
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