One Hundred Pounds of Hope held a fund raising event on May 8th, 2010 at the West End Community Center in Richmond, Virginia.

What a successful night it proved to be. Over 155 tickets were sold. People of all ages showed up and enjoyed traditional Cambodian cuisine, dancing and singing. Amanda Sam, One Hundred Pounds of Hope’s founder, gave an inspiring talk on the challenges of growing up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. She also highlighted the needs of the Cambodian people today and the work that One Hundred Pounds of Hope is doing.

An Evening For Cambodia was a huge success. Many new people learned about this organization. Everyone had a great time, but most importantly over $9,000 was raised for relief efforts.

Please continue to visit www.onehundredpoundsofhope.org and our Facebook page to see what else is happening with One Hundred Pounds of Hope.

One Hundred Pounds of Hope was organized to expand upon the efforts of our founder, Amanda Prak Sam, to address starvation and malnutrition in Cambodia. Last year she and her husband, Thoeun Sam, helped more than 700 families by personally distributing non-perishable food items to the needy in their native Cambodia.

This year we are in a position to do more. After assembling a
committed board, we applied for and were granted 501(c) 3 status
allowing us to solicit and accept tax-deductible donations. Already we have tripled funds raised in 2007, allowing us to help more families this year. Our board representative departs July 31st to manage this year's relief distribution. We look forward to updating you on the specifics of our 2008 accomplishments, including photos and video, late this summer.

We have also made strides this year to increase local awareness of the need for our help in Cambodia. Amanda has been received well at speaking engagements with organizations, including Kiwanis Club, Churches, Rotary Club of Richmond and Freeman High School. Amanda's moving story and her passion to help others have inspired these organizations to help.

We are pleased with our progress thus far and excited about our plans for the future. We are researching partnership opportunities with organizations who have resources in Cambodia. For 2009, we are focused on launching projects that will help Cambodians in the longer term, such as school rebuilding. Many thanks to our supporters.

2008 Relief Mission to Cambodia
A Brief Report

In August 2008, One Hundred Pounds of Hope dispatched Amanda Sam, our President, to Cambodia to deliver over $9,000 in emergency relief in our first annual sponsored mission in country. Amanda made two stops. The first was in Battambang, which is a village we are examining for a potential school-building project in the future. Amanda met with community leaders there and together they assembled a list of the neediest families in the village. Amanda contributed to each of the 60 identified families a 100 pound bag of rice, two bottles of fish sauce, 50 noodle packs and 10 cans of sardines what is considered to be enough food for a family of 4 for 1 month.

The families were immensely grateful.
Amanda’s next stop was Cambodia’s Capital, Phnom Penh, where she found a neighborhood devastated by a fire. In the disaster, 800 families had been displaced and were living in a tarp and umbrella shanty town. Having lost all of their meager possessions in the blaze, these families were starving and no government aid was forthcoming. Working with local community leaders again, Amanda assessed the situation and resolved to provide as much emergency food to these stricken families as she could. Amanda met with local food distributors and negotiated excellent pricing for over 17,000 pounds of rice, thousands of noodle packs and soy sauce. Amanda then assembled a team of volunteers to divide the bulk food into 800 packages and to deliver the food via truck to the fire-devastated community.

What then transpired was amazing. Upon her return, the community leaders were surprised; they had not expected her to come back. Puzzled, Amanda asked why they didn’t think she would be back and they replied that they had been visited by a number of organizations – large and small – offering help, but their promises had not amounted to anything. The community leaders immediately organized the families and provided security and logistics support to Amanda’s food-distribution effort. At the end of the day, exhausted and filthy, Amanda looked over a village of displaced people who now had meals for their families.

We believe there are important lessons to be drawn from this moving experience. First, this story demonstrates the power of our organization to accomplish complicated tasks on-the-ground and in-the-moment in Cambodia. We believe that the other organizations who came to visit the displaced community in Phnom Penh meant to keep every one of their promises and may still do so. But the power of One Hundred Pounds of Hope is its ability to act without bureaucracy and with speed and agility. This keeps our costs low and helps us to direct relief quickly and efficiently. These are distinguishing characteristics of our organization and ones of which we are very proud.

Second, we must ask the question, “what next?” After the rice bags and other foods are handed out and we leave the site, then what? After the rice is cooked and consumed, after the pot is washed, where will the next meal come from? In Phnom Penh, Amanda was asked to address the crowd and offer words of encouragement and advice. Her message to them encapsulated our long-term vision for Cambodia: “Send your children to school!” One Hundred Pounds of Hope believes that the best avenue for breaking the cycle of poverty in Cambodia is to encourage education and vocational training. Our future efforts will include not only emergency relief but also school buildings, supplies, and books with a true and long-lasting sense of hope as our goal.