By it’s very nature a Network Marketing company is about people and relationships. Ecoflow prides itself in being one of the most ethical and fair businesses in this market sector. As part of this ethos of helping people every year Ecoflow supports and maintains a number of charities largely to do with the young.
Currently Ecoflow sponsors four charities directly where it has full control over the funding it offers. By ensuring a close relationship with each charity we can be assured that the money we give is not frittered away or spent on administration.
Now that we are a multi national company it is important that any such charity can be related to our international distributor base. For this reason we have expanded from just UK charities to a major charity in Cambodia which is our own along with four friends of our chairman and his wife, details of the Indochina Starfish Foundation follow this introduction.
We are also involved in two youth charities in the UK, The Bovey Tracey Youth Action and the Uptown Café, more on these in a moment.
Finally we have one product related charity, the Radiation Research Trust which is directly involved in investigating and funding research into the use of Mobile Phones and suspected health risks.
INDOCHINA STARFISH FOUNDATION
Late in 2005 Myra was approached by three friends in the UK and Hongkong to become a trustee of a Children’s charity in Cambodia. The charity, the Indochina Starfish Foundation, was just being set up as a consequence of visits to Phnom Penh during the previous year. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries on earth largely due to the monstrous genocide that took place under the rule of Pol Pot in the 1980’s. You may have seen or heard of the ‘Killing Fields’, a film about this terrible time.
The population of Cambodia is very uneducated as all the professionals were murdered by Pol Pot leaving an enormous vacuum for Lawyers, Teachers and Doctors. Since 1992, the country has slowly been rebuilding under a benign if very corrupt government. The population of 12 million is very young not uneducated, State Schools, although low standard, are well attended and with tourism growing rapidly, thanks to the temples at Angkor, the future is positive.
However, there are a great deal of children who fall outside the system, living in slums with their parents and irking out a living by collecting garbage or sorting rubbish on the tip. These children are mainly in Phnom Penh and are the poorest of all people in Cambodia.
As a ‘Street Child’, life revolves around sorting and selling garbage for about 16 pence per day from the age of 3 or 4. Once older, both boys and girls, are sold by their families into prostitution or as slaves. Most do not attend State School nor can read or write Khmer, the local language.
As individuals, the trustees of the ISF have bought three commercial/residential units in the centre of Phnom Penh and have converted these into a school/centre for the poorest children. We now have 71 children under our care. We currently give the parents food, such as rice and soy sauce, in return for letting us bring the children together and teach them English. Why English ?, well it is considered essential for a child to find a job in Tourism which is seen as the largest employer in the future. However, we only started here, are goal now is to get these children into State School through ‘Catch Up’ courses held at the centre. For the older children, 14 plus, we are working with other NGO’s to get them into Vocational Courses. Additionally, and something Myra is very keen on, we are setting up a medical program to screen, inoculate and monitor the children’s health.
Ecoflow has taken up the reigns to be a major player in this charity. It has already funded a share of the centre, two further projects relating to a local Orphanage and a slum clearance project and sees it self as crucial to the future development of the ISF.
There is too much going on to explain it all here so please look at the website www.indochinastarfish.org which has much more detail and photos etc.
Ecoflow has a specific project for you to help with. In Cambodia the art of dance is very accomplished and amazing to watch. Like Thai it is very soothing and sultry and a joy to watch. As in other poor areas of the world dance and drama help raise the happiness of the poorest people in society. It has been shown by UNESCO and other major NGO’s that dance in particular helps in these difficult situation.
Ecoflow has committed to raising sufficient funds to convert the roof or the three buildings into a dance centre. We have visited other projects having the same facility and will use their experience to design and build ours. Every child attending the centre will be encouraged to take part in dance and drama.
We will be expanding on how you can help in the near future.
We hope that this charity, as a truly international project, will inspire all our distributors. We will continue to support the Bovey Tracey Youth Café and the Uptown Café but will put our main efforts into the Indochina Starfish Foundation as we feel this is where we can all truly help.
Website – www.Indochinastarfish.org
