On Thursday four of the Morris Finance team headed to Siem Reap in Cambodia for the second year running to visit a number of not for profit foundations including our corporately sponsored foundation “Hearts to Harmony,” established by Geelong sisters Lauren and Cassie Gravett, who opened the Sister Srey cafe in Cambodia some three years ago.

The team consisting of our Managing Director-Nathan Murray, Customer Service Manager-Simon Sweetten, Senior Credit Assessment Officer-Matthew Luehman and Tom Fallaw-Commercial Account Manager from AFL club the Geelong Cats, with a hectic but rewarding schedule planned for the next eight days.

Please see travel itinerary as described by Nathan Murray as below.

Day 1:

Arrived in Cambodia after traveling from Australia, this is our second trip now after we visited in March 2014.

When we arrived we headed to a meeting with the owners of the Heart to Harmony Foundation – http://www.heartstoharmony.org/about-us.html , we are here to assist the foundation in any way we can, in 2014 we purchased the foundation a truck so they can deliver food to remote villages and drop the children involved with Hearts to Harmony to and from school each day.

Day 2:

Travelled to AnkorWat to visit the ancient temples and have a water blessing, the place has to be seen to be believed.

Day 3:

Construction started building a home for a local family, having 10 in the family they had previously been living under a tree, the family is very excited that they will have their own house / home by the end of the week.

We started building at 7.00 am and finished at 12.00 pm, we can’t work after 12.00 pm as it is too hot, this will continue until Friday of this week.

Day 4:

We will continue to build the house with the frame going up.

After lunch we are heading to a remote primary school to visit the children and donate 40 bikes to the school so the kids can get to and from school. The families are very poor and can’t afford bikes and general every day needs to get around.

Day 5:

Continue to build our house, after lunch we are heading to another remote school, with the help of the Geelong Cats we are conducting a AFL clinic for the children and show them the skills of our national game. 60 kids will be in attendance and they will all receive a Morris Finance T Shirt, AFL Football, cap and stickers, 10 lucky kids will also receive a Geelong Cats guernsey to take home and keep. The clinic will go for an hour and include basic skills and a game of keepings off, it sounds basic but the children have never experienced anything like this before.

Day 6:

Continue to build the house, we are also visiting local families to get a feel for how they live and what their everyday challengers are and present their children with books and pencils so they can learn to write and read.

Cambodia is very third world and don’t have access to the simply tools we use every day in Australia.

Day: 7

Finish the house and handover to the family which will be followed by a blessing to bless the house, this is very common in Cambodia.

Day: 8

Travel back to Australia.

We will be sharing daily updates on our social media pages so make sure you follow us at Facebook: MorrisFinance, Twitter: @MorrisFinance and Instagram: @MorrisFInance to follow the teams progress on their journey.