2006-07 News

On behalf of the Board of Tabitha Foundation Australia (TFA), I am pleased to provide this end of financial year report.
Fundraising
Tabitha Australia has been growing strongly year on year, with donations processed in 2006/07 increasing by nearly 90% on last financial year. Below are the annual donation totals since TFA was founded in 2002.

At the end of May 2007 the most incredible team of 27 people travelled to Kampot, a southern province in Cambodia, to build houses for people they had never met, who were living in extremely poor circumstances.

For me this was a new but enjoyable challenge, having last year joined Jude and Doug, along with a few friends, for my first building trip. As a result of an incredible trip, we decided to make the step of leading our own team to Cambodia. It has been quite a journey and along the way there have been so many people to thank for their support, donations, drinks, medicines, t-shirts, printing, fundraising efforts, fundraising support, general enthusiasm and lots more, not forgetting the infamous goat. See 03 November 2006 News Article.

Tabitha Cambodia's program year runs from October through to September.

In 2006, the students of Year 12 raised in excess of $10,000 through various fundraising activities. One of their end-of-year donations was $1,200 to Tabitha for the construction of a house for a poor family in Cambodia.

In February this year Peter O'Keefe, a teacher at the school at that time, travelled to Cambodia with a team of volunteers 27-strong. The team built 20 houses in Svay Rieng province in the south-east of Cambodia, close to the Vietnamese border.

The house built with the funds donated by Port Macquarie High School now shelters a family of eight people. To say that this family was happy and grateful to receive their home, would be an understatement. This particular family had never lived in a proper house before, so it was a very momentous day for them.

Tabitha Foundation Australia and the family would like to thank Port Maquarie High School, its staff and the students for their very generous and worthwhile donation.

Tabitha House Building in Cambodia As the 12 of us - representatives from Bishop Druitt College - stepped out from our air-conditioned bus into our Tabitha-assigned construction area, there was an air of excitement about the group. We knew, of course, that we were going to sweat, be challenged with the task of manual labour and probably sustain spatterings of minor injury, but we also knew, thanks to our briefing at the Tabitha Foundation the previous day, that we were ultimately undertaking a task of goodwill. We jumped in, very eager and less cautious, and quickly made fools of ourselves.

NEPEAN Rowing Club will come alive with dance on Saturday, May 5, in aid of the Tabitha Foundation Australia.

A sustainable non-profit organisation, the Foundation provides relief to thousands of homeless people by sending teams of Australian volunteers to Cambodia to build houses.

Former Blue Mountains residents, Rachel Riley and Elizabeth Allen, are among 20 volunteers from the Foundation who will be travelling to Cambodia next month to participate in the next building project.