What COVID-19 means for us

More conversations than not in the past week have featured Coronavirus, the world-wide pandemic of nearly 200,000 cases.

Fear has gained so much prevalence in the media, in people’s homes and in our language. With so much uncertainty, it’s hard for businesses to gauge what the next year looks like. But for us, hope will prevail. Our bigger vision urges us to look beyond the crisis of right now and remember why we started this in the first place.

We believe it’s important to keep our supporters informed, especially when there’s enough happening in your own cities and nations that you may not have heard the current situation in Cambodia.

With 33 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Cambodia (although, there’s concern that there are more that have not been tested), the government has made the call to close all schools indefinitely.

Therefore, currently in the SHE Home, the girls are not attending school. We are conducting classes from inside the Home so the girls are continuing their education as normal. We are taking the girls on bike rides for fresh air everyday and increasing phone calls to their families now that family visits have been suspended for this season. Our house mums are creating ways to keep the girls entertained over the next period with various activities and games.

Our challenge for the next ambiguous period is opportunities for income as teams and events cancel. These are two significant portions of our revenue and so we are wary of what will take place over the next few months. By events, we mean the various places we sell our products made by the families of the girls and by our SHE Sewing Centre. Often these are big conferences or various local markets, both of which are falling through as big gatherings are needing to be cancelled.

It’s important to us to be transparent with our supporters, letting you all in to the ‘behind the scenes’ of our processes and decisions. Like so many businesses, the rest of the year will be a challenge but again, hope is so much stronger than fear and we are determined to see this through to keep supporting those who really need someone to fight for them.

Thank you to our donors and sponsors that are making such a difference and supporting us so we can continue to fight injustice. We understand that this is a tough season for many of you so your continued support is so valued and is no small sacrifice in our eyes.