What would you do if a new child entered your life with 500 siblings? It was not Kari Grady Grossman's intent to parent an entire village when she and her husband adopted their son from Cambodia in 2001, but that is how their journey turns out. The couple built a school in their son's honor in 2001 and their lives have not been the same since.

Now about 500 children are attending their school and last year, the Grady Grossman School had 92 kids in first grade, yet only 16 graduated from sixth. Fifty percent student drop-out begins in third grade because at 8 or 9 years old, children are needed to work. In the commune of Trapeang Chhor, where the Grady Grossman School is located, that means chopping down trees. 
1.5 million people in the capital city of Phnom Penh cook with wood sticks. Currently, Trapeang Chhor is the largest source of these cooking sticks.

Hardwood trees chopped up for cooking fuel is annihilating the forest, funding a culture of corruption, depleting the water source of the entire country, and keeping children out of school.

The environment is being destroyed fast, and with it, their children’s future. Even those involved in the timber trade are aware of the doom this activity portends, but they feel powerless. They have to eat and the trees are their only resource to exploit.

In Trapeang Chhor, cooking fuel has everything to do with education.

Kari's goal is for every child to complete a primary education through 6th grade. Rather than build a secondary school which few could afford to attend, she and her husband decided to make primary school attendance more economically feasible with a vocational training center where sustainable, income-generating skills are learned. Since students only attend school half the day, they intend to utilize the other half of the day to teach valuable life skills. The first project of The Abundant Forest Life Skills Training Center will address cooking fuel.

Through the worldwide network of fuel briquette-rs they found Sanu Kaji Shrestha, the Nepalese founder and chairman of FoST (Foundation for Sustainable Technologies). Sanu Kaji Shresthra, is an alternative cooking fuel expert and has won the runner up prize in World Challenge 2007, sponsored by BBC World, Newsweek and the Shell Corporation for his work introducing biomass briquettes and solar cookers to urban and rural poor in Nepal. For more info about FoST please go to: www.fost-nepal.org or read the information written about FoST on this blog.

So the Grady Grossman's next challenge will be to get people to buy their briquettes in the marketplace rather than wood sticks.

Please read Kari's blog, it is an amazing story you definitely need to read! Because they are in a remote area now, she will try to update 3 times a week, technology willing.

From the blog Be the Change Network -  www.gradygrossmanschool.org/wordpress/index.php :

"I lie in bed at night and breathe deep, trying not to be overwhelmed with the gravity of what we are doing here. We are introducing something that could very well change the dynamic of environmental destruction and rural school poverty in Cambodia - all because I Googled “alternative cooking fuel” on the internet a year ago. And here we are doing it. The people see the hope this idea brings. I’m amazed. Even the District Chief wants to contribute sawdust. He is talking about spreading the workshop to other schools in the district and members of the Lutheran World Federation want to come to the workshop. The news is spreading quickly…. this is truly the greatest adventure. I cannot imagine a better way to spend my time, energy and talents."

Kari has also written a book and since the publishing of Bones That Float on April 17, 2007, they have sold more than 2,000 copies, and they have raised over $30,000 for the Grady Grossman School!

If you would also like to buy Bones That Float to support their great work, go to their website:

http://www.gradygrossmanschool.org/