22/12/2025
On 15th December, our team of 5 Australian volunteers & 6 Khmer therapists arrived in Oudung Farm to set up a mobile treatment clinic to provide this remote community with access to physical medicine services that they would otherwise not have access to.
Our challenge over the 5 days would be to treat 219 patients.
We would treat យាយ (grandmas) with leg pain, ពូ (uncles) with back problems, កូន (kids) with shoulder issues and all the members of the community in between suffering a host of other conditions.
Who was doing the treating is an important part of this story and our mission.
Our Khmer team through practical training and workshops would learn to assess for conditions, refine their evaluations and build on their treatment techniques to provide this community with pain relief & education to allow them to continue to manage their conditions.
Our Khmer therapists stepped up to the challenge & exceeded it. They met the hard work in front of them with curiosity, grace & selflessness. Their enthusiasm to learn was matched only by their eagerness to help knowing that the skills they learned here could help this community today & also their ability to provide healthcare for their communities into the future.
This couldn't have been done without the support of our Australian team. You came from afar to provide knowledge & tools not available here and shared them freely.
Every question was met with patience, each setback with resilience and each new experience with empathy.
Their capacity to grow was matched by your capacity to give. The confidence and skills you gave them will continue to have an impact on these communities long after your gone.
It was a privilege to able to witness and share in this exchange. For us all as strangers to come together to serve a higher purpose by helping the needs of a remote community brings a message of hope to a noisy world.
Thanks for putting your trust in me. We'll see you all on the next trip.
