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SPS Story – in the founding chairman Peter Slater’s own words

In late 2005 I visited Cambodia for the first time to visit the amazing Angkor temples in Siem Reap. During that short visit I was so stuck by the beauty of the country, the charm of the Cambodian people and the horror of their recent past under Pol Pot that I decided I wanted to help in any way I could.

Initially I supported a small orphanage, the Good Shepherd, in Phnom Penh. It was run by a German couple which looked after 22 young children. I visited many times and started to support the orphanage both financially and through arranging Christmas presents for the children. I did this for many years.

During these visits I became more attached to Cambodia and its people and decided to set up a school to help other children from the slums of Stung Meanchay in Phnom Penh. This was managed through a registered charity called the IndoChina Starfish Foundation (https://isfcambodia.org/) which was founded in 2006 with just 15 children who had been collecting garbage. I was the first chairman of that organisation and Ms Thin Theary was the first teacher and manager of the school. The ISF has now grown substantially and in 2018 supports 750 students through two schools and 2000 people in the communities where the children live. It also provides football coaching to around 4000 disabled and non-disabled boys and girls every week.

As the children in the Good Shepherd got older I realised that once they reached 18 they would have nowhere to go and would have to fend for themselves. So I decided to buy two five bedroom houses where the older students could live to continue their tertiary studies. This was the genesis of the SPS Cambodian Foundation. We started in 2010 when our first four students, two sets of two sisters, came to stay at the houses. The numbers of students gradually rose over the next few years.

When two further houses next to the existing houses came up for sale between 2012 and 2014 they were purchased and leased to the charity on 15-year leases. In 2012 the charity found it had a surplus of space and the two Cambodian women (Theary and Nary) who were looking after the students asked if the SPS Foundation would help some poor disadvantages students from their home provinces of Kratie and Bantam Meanchay. The charity trustees agreed and six students came from each of the two provinces. They first went to the High School in Phnom Penh and are now all at university.

From 2012 onwards more students came to the SPS houses from the Good Shepherd Orphanage and started their tertiary education at universities studying majors of their choice. In 2014 four friends who were students in Phnom Penh and who were coming to the end of their High School careers dreamt of going to university but their families could not afford the fees. SPS agreed to sponsor the students through university but let the students remain living with their families.

By 2018 five of the original students had completed their tertiary education and had all moved into excellent jobs of their own choosing. Each earns a salary well above what they would have achieved without their tertiary education and each has excellent career opportunities. We still support 20 students who are living in the houses and sponsor six students who live with their families through university.

In 2017 the Foundation started a new initiative to help the children in a poor rural community in Kratie province (Theary’s home village). So far SPS has given school uniforms and books to 50 children in that community, provided a small solar panel for each home to give electricity, redecorated the village school, rebuilt the school toilets and built a small football pitch and playground. In 2018 the Foundation dug 3 lakes to catch rainwater and provide fresh water to the community.

In 2019 the charity funded the building of a library/study centre next to the school.

You can find out much more about the activities of the charity in the annual newsletters that have been published since 2013 (use the link at the top if the page) . These give the stories of each of the students that have been supported, of the SPS family holidays and many other stories. You can view these using the link at the top of the page

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