They are particularly keen to let people know about their involvement in community projects. Of course these aren’t tourist attractions but if you are interested in donating or getting involved, visits can be arranged by appointment. We were invited to visit two projects – The Hôtel de la Paix Sewing Centre and the Sangkheum Centre for Children.

The Sewing Centre

The centre is located at Wat Damnak, which is only five minutes’ tuk-tuk drive from the hotel, across the river from the Old Market (Psar Chas). It’s overseen by local monks from the Life and Hope Association (LHA). The centre provides an opportunity for vulnerable young women who are otherwise without future prospects. Over a ten-month course, the women are taught sewing skills, English, and basic life skills including a little business training.

On completion of the course, the women are provided with a sewing machine and start-up materials so they can return to their villages and start their own business, thus ensuring a bright future and the ability to support themselves and their families. Some women are also able to set up a sewing business at the centre itself.

There are a variety of ways you can help with this excellent project, including sponsoring a student for a month, or even for the entire course, or donating a sewing machine or push bike. The women need the bikes to get to and from the centre and the house they share.

There’s more information about the sewing school on the LHA website.

The Sangkheum Centre

This centre (“sangkheum” means “hope” in Khmer) has been providing education, training, scholastic support and care to disadvantaged children since 2001. Have a look at the photos and see how well-cared for they look!

These children are either orphans, neglected or abused and might otherwise face a life on the streets. In some cases they may be there because their parents are simply unable to care for them. The project to give them hope and better prospects was established as a co-operation between Progetto Continenti (an Italian NGO) and the Khmer Angkor Development Organization (a Cambodian NGO).

Again, there are a variety of ways to donate to this wonderful project – anything from toys and school supplies to sponsoring a child is welcome. You can find out more on the Sangkheum Centre website.

The Hôtel de la Paix is also involved in several other community projects including Shinta Mani, which provides free hospitality training to young Cambodians at risk, and the Green Gecko Project, which provides care for more than 60 former street children as well as support for their parents. Through their co-operation with the LHA they also support work in various villages to alleviate poverty and provide support for their basic needs such as health, education and accommodation.

Details of all of these projects and how you can become involved are in the community section of the Hôtel de la Paix website.

More recently, I had the privilege of entering into email correspondence with Dr Jon Prinz, a top food scientist (he’s even worked with Heston Blumenthal!) and a serial expat. He’s a fascinating man and I was delighted when he agreed to be interviewed by me. I imagined we could talk about life as an expat or about food science (for our sister site Not Delia), the possibilities were endless. What I didn’t expect was for him to tell me he had Parkinson’s Disease and that that was what he wanted to talk about in our interview.

PD? Time for me to do some homework! The first stop, naturally, was Jon’s own blog, PD Unplugged. In this excellent blog, which he co-writes with his wife Marie, they talk about life with PD. In their own words:

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is many things. They say that when you’ve seen one case, you’ve seen one case. This is Jon’s case, for what it’s worth. We call this PD unplugged because we will tell the truth about Parkinson’s – uncut, unadorned, unplugged – without that pluckiness in the face of adversity that you often get when people write about chronic illness. Read about the moves and shakes, drugs and doctors, hopes and fears, tricks and traps, successes and failures of life in the shadow of PD.

I highly recommend this blog as entertaining reading as well as a source of an incredible amount of information. They tell it like it is and no subject is too delicate to mention. Despite the seriousness of the subject they’re writing about, Jon and Marie’s wit and humour shine through. I defy you to read the blog and not get a few laughs out of it.

But PD’s not a laughing matter. Parkinson’s is a progressive neurological condition and there is currently no cure, although there are a range of medical treatments to control the symptoms and maintain the quality of life. There’s a vast amount of information on the Parkinson’s UK site, where you can download free publications, join in their forum, get advice, or learn how you can support the cause. I urge you to go and have a look. Meanwhile, I’d better get back to doing my homework so I can make the most of my opportunity to interview Dr Prinz.

James Nelson F.F.A.
Vice President
British Australian Pensioner Association
55 Whittinghams Way
Leongatha South
3953 Victoria
Australia
www.britishpensions.org.au

Useful pension addresses:

Department for Work and Pensions

The Rt Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Department for Work and Pensions
Caxton House
Tothill Street
LONDON
SW1H 9DA

Steve Webb MP
Minister of State for Pensions
same address as above.
Email both via the DWP website: www.dwp.gov.uk/contact/

DWP Overseas Branch:

Department for Work and Pensions
Pensions & Overseas Benefits Directorate
Tyneview Park
Whitley Road
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
NE98 1BA
(Quote your National Insurance number)
Website: www.dwp.gov.uk

Your Member of Parliament can be found by consulting the UK Parliament website:
List of MPs by constituency

Labour Party:

The Labour Party
Eldon House
Regent Centre
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE3 3PW

Website: www.labour.org.uk
Contact: www.labour.org.uk/contact

Conservative Party:

Correspondence
Conservative Campaign Headquarters
30 Millbank
LONDON
SW1P 4DP
Website: www.conservatives.com
Contact: www.conservatives.com/Information/Contact_Us.aspx

Liberal Democrats:

Liberal Democrats
4 Cowley Street
LONDON
SW1P 3NB
Website: www.libdems.org.uk
Contact: www.libdems.org.uk/contact.aspx

National Pensioners Convention:

Dot Gibson
General Secretary
National Pensioners Convention
19-23 Ironmonger Row
LONDON
EC1V 3QN
Website: www.npcuk.org
Email:

Web-based information regarding social security rights within the European Union:

European Commission: Co-ordination of EU Member States’ social security schemes

We discussed the subject of child sex tourism in our email newsletter of 31 January 2007, but it seemed worth raising the issues again and seeing what progress, if any, has been made to stop this evil practice.

People often think of sex tourism as being most prevalent in the Far East in countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, but it’s much more widespread than that. In fact, you can find a sex tourism industry in many countries where there’s widespread poverty – the sad fact is that desperation drives people to desperate measures.

And you don’t find people much more desperate than street kids, who are additionally vulnerable because they’re more easily exploited by unscrupulous adults. Studies in Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya have shown that many children in the sex industry have lived on the streets, or are still living there; they typically start having sex between the ages of 12 and 14. Most of them are on drugs, and many of them are HIV positive. But even in relatively prosperous countries, children may fall victim to predatory adults from the rich West. For US citizens it may be as simple as just hopping across the border to Ciudad Juarez. And British citizens have been prosecuted in Sweden, France and Spain as well as in less developed countries.

To some extent, the Internet removes the need to travel at all. Hotline.ie, a service set up by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland, reported in July 2008 that there had been a 70% increase in the number of reports it had received about child pornography in 2007, compared to the year before. But there are still plenty of people travelling overseas for sex – sometimes they even go on organised tours, using tour operators with innocent-sounding names.

So are the efforts by government agencies and NGOs to stamp out child sex tourism having any effect? Well, yes and no.

Several countries, including the UK, have now passed laws making it possible to convict people for child sex offences they’ve committed abroad. (Indeed, in several places in Thailand you can see posters threatening “Commit crime in our country – Go to jail in yours”.) However, enforcement is very mixed. Part of this is because the police in the country where the offences are committed don’t have the resources to investigate child sex crime – and this may be even more the case where the child victims are street kids; often no-one is concerned about their plight. On occasions, the police themselves may be paid to look the other way.

But sometimes, sorry to say, it’s a matter of the government of the offender’s country of origin not being willing to commit resources to extraditing and prosecuting its own criminals. According to ECPAT UK, a leading NGO in the field of combating the sexual exploitation of children, the United States and Australia have made considerable strides in tracking down, repatriating and convicting their child sex offenders. But while the US have convicted 65 people since 1997 for child sex offences committed outside the USA, and Australia has convicted 28, the UK have managed to convict fewer than half-a-dozen. Nice though it might be to think that Britons abroad aren’t into child sex abuse, the facts speak otherwise; several Britons have been convicted overseas, and many of them are repeat offenders.

The British Government has argued that it’s more effective to try to secure a conviction in the country where the offence is committed. But that’s not the case where law enforcement is weak. And in any case current law enforcement efforts tend to concentrate on those who’ve committed offences in the UK and fled abroad, rather than those who’ve managed to keep a clean record in the UK. At present, British sex offenders who were convicted in a non-UK jurisdiction don’t get added to the UK’s Sex Offenders Register – making it far easier for them to prey on children again.

Even if they’ve been convicted in the UK, they’re usually free to travel overseas in the future – although they’re supposed to notify police if they’re travelling for more than three days. Although police have the power to apply to the courts for a Foreign Travel Order to limit or prevent child sex offenders from travelling abroad, these only last for no more than six months at a time, and require a good deal of paperwork – so only three have ever been issued. On the other hand, over 3,000 have been issued to football hooligans.

Not a very good record, is it? If other developed countries with similar legal systems to ours can do so much better, shouldn’t the British Government be doing more?

To find out more about this subject, or to join the campaign against child sex tourism, please visit www.ecpat.org.uk

Gozo SPCA was founded in 1976 by a few expatriates who were dedicated to improving the welfare of small animals on the island. Initially we operated as a branch of the SPCA (Malta) but now we are a completely separate organisation. We work closely with all of the animal rescue organisations in Malta but we are the only such organisation on Gozo.

More information on the society can be read on our website:
www.spca-gozo.org

As part of our fundraising activities, the society sells a range of merchandise, that can be seen here: SPCA merchandise – this includes a calendar, Christmas cards and animal tags, all reasonably priced. We all need calendars and Christmas cards, so why not help out a good cause when you buy them?