Rotary Reality Tour

Kleine Hilfsaktion e.V. (KhA) has worked with various Rotary Clubs for years, always with the mission to help as many people in need as possible in the most direct way.

KhA’s affiliation with Rotary started in 2013 and has since morphed into a strong partnership based on trust and sustained through a shared commitment to helping those most in need. At that time, the Willich Rotary Club invited KhA to present a project of our choice during their weekly meeting. Our presentation showed the shocking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) situation at a Primary School in rural Cambodia. Understanding the dire situation these children were in, the RC Willich members decided to act and agreed to fund a complete WASH infrastructure and education program at Chy Hong Primary School in northwestern Cambodia’s Battambang Province. KhA, RC Willich and KhA’s local NGO partner in Battambang, Bareebo Organization (Bareebo), equipped a school of 111 children with a rooftop rainwater collection system, 40,000 liters of rainwater storage capacity, hand washing stations, a toilet facility, biological-sand-water filters and trained the teachers in the basics of WASH in schools and how to use and maintain their new WASH technologies.

Since that first successful WASH at Schools project in 2013, KhA has implemented 34 more WASH at Schools and 78 WASH at Health Centers projects with Rotary Clubs and other donors such as Toyota, Cents4help (Bosch), ApoBank, various organizations and companies and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Our Rotary partners are the Rotary Clubs of Willich, Neuss and Kaarst-Korchenbroich, the Rotary Club of Pursat City and Rotary International. They support KhA’s School WASH, EyeLight (cataract surgeries & eye care), Emergency (aid) and Education projects throughout Cambodia.

Cambodia – Rotary Reality Tour Summary

As Rotarians, you are naturally engaged with charity and aid projects. Would you like to travel to a developing country and do a direct aid project yourself? I, Roland Debschütz, would accompany you, often with a local Cambodian development worker or Rotarian from our on-site team.

Shortly before your Rotary Reality Tour, our colleagues in Cambodia will go to the field to find households needing aid, collect data on and take pictures of these households, and provide us with a description of each situation. Every Rotarian tour participant will then choose their own emergency aid project, which they will implement on-site, a truly unique opportunity. Tour participants will join in a village eye screening conducted by Bareebo for the EyeLight Project and deliver wheelchairs directly to those who need them in rural areas. We invite you to celebrate with the children from our KSS School at a party in central Cambodia.

We manage all accommodations, transport and tour organization.

During this journey, you will gather impressions and experiences that will stay with you for a lifetime. You will visit places well off the beaten path. You will help people who need it. And you will have the most authentic Cambodian visit possible, a visit that only a Rotary Reality Tour can deliver.

Project Eyesight

Menschen mit Behinderung

Project Help For Disabled

Project Emergency Aid

The Next Rotary Reality Tour

 We want to give you a chance to share this experience with us from February 17 to 24th, 2024. If you want to visit the beautiful temples of Angkor Wat or add a holiday to Cambodia, Laos or Thailand before or after the Rotary Reality Tour, we are here to help you arrange that.

Participation in our tour is limited to ten Rotarians; each participant is welcome to invite one accompanying person. Of course, the following guidelines also apply to the accompanying person.

The Details of the Tour

The Rotary Reality Tour is a charity tour linking each Rotarian tour participant directly to their respective Rotary Club (RC). Each participant, each participant must bring donations in the amount of € 1,500. The emergency aid projects will be financed from the pool of the participants’ donations. The rest will go 100% to our WASH program, which we will present to you in detail during the trip. WASH means clean water and hygiene for schools and health centers. Click here to see the WASH film. You can hardly save human lives more directly.

As with the Fundriding tours, each participant must obtain a used wheelchair before the trip. The wheelchair will be declared as your medical baggage on the flight and transported to the destination region free of charge. Of course, we will assist you with arranging this should you require it. You personally deliver the wheelchair you brought to the patient in their home, a positive and emotional experience that will profoundly impact you. Every year, in this way, we have brought much-needed mobility and independence to hundreds of people with disabilities.

Costs

The cost of the one-week trip is € 1,200.

This Includes:

  • Pick up at Phnom Penh airport
  • Seven nights’ accommodation in good hotels
  • All in-country transportation (bus, taxi, tuk tuk, boat)
  • All tour organizing and management
  • Visit to a floating village
  • School celebration
  • Rotary meeting with the Rotary Club of Pursat City
  • Individual wheelchair delivery (Emergency Project I)
  • Trip to Veal Veng District in the Cardamon Mountains, Pursat Province
  • Visit a WASH in Health Centers project in Veal Veng District
  • Frog Cave Monastery in Banan District, Battambang Province
  • Participation in an eye screening in Banan District as part of KhA’s EyeLight Project
  • A trip to Phnom Sompov Village in Banan District to watch hundreds of thousands of bats leave their cave at sunset
  • Individual Emergency Aid Project (Emergency Project II)
  • Tuk tuk ride from Banan to Battambang
  • A 6-8 hour boat journey from Battambang City to Siem Reap City along the Sangker River and over the Tonle Sap Lake

Not Included:

  • Flight, food, drink and all other activities outside the stated program of the Rotary Reality Tour

Daily Schedule

  • Pickup at Phnom Penh International Airport and transport to the hotel.
  • All Rotary Reality Tour participants meet in the evening, have a brief tour orientation, and enjoy dinner together.
  • Spend the night in a nice hotel with a view of the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers.

  • After breakfast, we drive by bus to Pursat in central Cambodia. Driving time is about 3.5 hours.
  • We check into the beautiful Riverside Hotel in Pursat.
  • You can relax, enjoy a massage, walk through a nearby wet market, or swim at the huge outdoor pool; it’s been a long trip.
  • Around 4 pm, we join the weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Pursat City. Meet your Rotarian friends who will accompany you on wheelchair deliveries and emergency relief projects.
  • In the evening, explore this almost tourist-free city or simply relax at the Sky Bar of the nearby restaurant.

  • In the morning, we form groups of 2 or 3 people accompanied by our local Rotarian friends and deliver our wheelchairs directly to the homes of the people who need them; this often brings us to very rural areas.
  • At 4 pm, traveling through Pursat’s beautiful countryside, we visit our KSS School in Kandieng District, about 15 km from the hotel. Together with our 265 children, we celebrate the success of our school through a touching ceremony and a festive party fueled by the children’s enormous energy.

  • Since an emergency project often arises when delivering wheelchairs, we have left ample time in the morning to organize individual emergency projects and purchase the required materials to provide the help you think is needed, with the assistance of our local Rotarian friends.
  • The Rotary Club of Pursat City members are excited to guide you through Pursat’s exotic countryside and bustling Pursat City, providing you with personal insights into Cambodian culture and society that only a local can.
  • After lunch, we drive to the floating village of Kompong Luong, about 30 km from our hotel. This is a genuine floating village boasting schools, markets, monasteries, and restaurants, providing all the goods and services any village would, only its all floating on water, a far cry from the floating villages created as tourist attractions. In fact, we will almost surely be the only non-Cambodians there.

  • A travel day. We start early, right after breakfast. We shift our focus to Battambang Province in northwestern Cambodia, specifically Banan District, about 20 km from Battambang City, the provincial capital.
  • The route is the goal. We don’t take the new highway but drive in a scenic, meandering loop toward the Cardamon Mountains. Our first destination is Veal Veng District, to visit one of the 78 WASH at Health Centers projects that we, together with the BMZ,  recently provided with full WASH facilities and services.
  • I’ll guide you through this fascinating project, and, of course, as always, I’ll be available to answer questions.
  • After our visit, we will rest and have a simple lunch in Veal Veng.
  • The roads we take now are generally dustier, bumpier and more rustic, but never dull or bland. We drive to our day’s final destination, Banan District, Battambang Province.
  • Here we check into the Dalux Motel, which has a pool and plenty of space to relax. It is near the Banan Temple and the headquarters of our local NGO partner, Bareebo.
  • In the evening, relax by the pool with BBQ and discuss the schedule for the next two days with our Country Manager, Mr. David Emery, and Mr. Bong from Bareebo.

  • In the morning, we will visit the Chy Hong Primary School, where, with the help of the Willich Rotary Club, our WASH at Schools program was born in 2013.
  • Bareebo’s EyeLight Project team will be conducting an eye screening at this school while we are there. So we have the unique opportunity to engage with development workers and project participants as a community health project happens in real-time.
  • After lunch at HoneyComb Restaurant (owner Mr.Bong/Bareebo), we will visit a cave temple entirely off the beaten path. It is tucked away on a hillside on Banan’s backroads—Name: Frog Cave Monastery.
  • We will have a relaxing evening at the resort or dinner at the HoneyComp Restaurant.

  • Emergency aid projects are on the agenda today.  We will form groups of 3 and move around the target areas with Tuk Tuks. It will be a busy, engaging and interesting day.
  • The groups work independently. Each emergency aid project tries to help people immediately in the most direct way possible.
  • Emergency aid projects can be food deliveries, providing household materials (mosquito nets, pots and pans, for example), a trip to the hospital in Battambang, the planning of a new hut or a new small business, e.g., a chicken farm or even the purchase of a Tuk Tuk. In supporting a small start-up enterprise, a mother or father may be able to increase their family’s food security and better care for their children.
  • Around 5 pm, we visit Phnom Sompov Temple and wait for hundreds of thousands of bats to leave their cave to begin their evening foraging—a natural spectacle beyond compare.
  • After the bat cave and back at the resort, everyone will have much to discuss and share. Later that evening, at a small party, we will celebrate our time in Banan with our local partners and say goodbye to David and Mr. Bong, an experience you will remember for a long time. A unique and pleasant feeling, I promise you.

  • After a coffee or, at most, a quick breakfast, we take a 20 km Tuk Tuk ride to Battambang City. Here in the beautiful and laidback city, right on the Sangkar River, you have two hours to have breakfast, do some shopping or ride on the bamboo train. From here, Tuk Tuks will bring us to our private boat at the boat dock in Ek Phnom District.
  • We start with a meandering ride on the Sangkar River. Passing by floating villages, seeing traditional fishing boats and nets in action, all while traversing dynamic mangroves and riverine ecosystems. Then we enter the broad expanse of the Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, where the sky and water seemingly morph into one. The trip usually takes 6-8 hours.
  • We will be picked up at the boat harbor in Siem Reap and taken to the hotel.
  • In the evening, we say “Good Bye” over dinner together. We hope to see you again at a presentation in your Rotary Club. It would be an honor for us to be able to implement a project together with your Rotary Club—in you, we have trained a specialist for our projects already in place 😊

  • Do you have an international departure, onward journey, or a 4 am pickup to experience the legendary sunrise at Angkor Wat? Feel free to contact us, and we can help you arrange things.

Do you have any questions? Get in touch with us!

Kleine Hilfsaktion e.V.
Contact Person: Roland Debschütz
Bergheimer Straße 503
41466 Neuss I German
Phone +49 2131 460889
Mobil +49 172 2104489
info@kleinehilfsaktion.de

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