SMEC Foundation Donates Thermometers to Cambodian Hospitals

The SMEC Foundation has agreed to provide 30 thermometers for refrigerators in blood laboratories and hospitals in Cambodia.

This opportunity was brought to the attention of SMEC by the National Serology Reference Laboratory (NRL) in Melbourne which has an international co-operation program with various Asian countries to promote secure storage of blood products and improved testing procedures. During a recent visit to Cambodia the NRL Director, A/Prof. Elizabeth Dax AM, noticed that many hospital laboratories needed thermometers to ensure effective monitoring of the temperature of reagents for blood testing. The absence of temperature monitoring places patients at greater risk of misdiagnosis. NRL approached the SMEC Foundation which agreed to provide A$1900 to enable NRL to purchase the thermometers. Allocation of the thermometers among hospitals will be undertaken by the Cambodian office of the World Health Organisation. Delivery is expected in about six to eight weeks.

The SMEC Foundation was established by the Australian consulting firm SMEC in 2001 to provide small scale grant assistance to community groups and development projects in Australia and overseas. It has supported a wide range of projects, especially in health and education. This is the Foundation’s second project in Cambodia. SMEC donated engineering and architectural design services for the new complex of the Sunrise Children’s Village in Phnom Penh.

The Chairman of the SMEC Foundation, Mr Doug Price AM, expressed his satisfaction that the Foundation was able to assist NRL and the Cambodian health system in such a practical way. “SMEC has been operating in Cambodia for many years:, Mr Price stated. “We have contributed to the national development of the country in many ways over more than 30 years and I am pleased that we now have the opportunity to support effective blood supply. I look forward to future projects in Cambodia under the SMEC Foundation program”.

Mr Price oversaw the first SMEC projects in Cambodia from 1970 onwards and he was managing director of the company from 1975 until 1988. He is now retired but retains a keen interest in Cambodia.

SMEC Foundation Announces New Projects

The SMEC Foundation has agreed to provide $5000 to the Hamlin Relief and Aid Fund to support the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia which was established by Australian doctors Dr Reg and Catherine Hamlin. Part of the funds will be used to provide furniture for the hospital’s new Rural Village currently approaching completion. The village will provide permanent accommodation for the minority of patients who cannot be cured by surgery. The remaining funds will be used to support outreach surgery programs in hospitals in rural areas of Ethiopia.

Mr Price also announced that the Foundation will provide $1000 to the Free the Bears Fund based in Perth which establishes wildlife sanctuaries in South East Asia. The funds will be used to provide equipment and training for rangers policing sanctuaries in Cambodia as well as for project identification in Laos and Thailand.

The SMEC Foundation has also approved the provision of an annual scholarship for university study for the Australian Fund for Disadvantaged Children in Vietnam which manages several orphanages in Vietnam with Australian corporate support.

In Australia the SMEC Foundation will contribute $3000 to the expansion of the Raglan Gallery in Cooma into a regional facility. The extensions to the gallery will provide exhibition space for visiting exhibitions as well as for artists working in the Monaro region, including youth and the elderly.

Mr Price described these donations as an important step forward in the operations of the SMEC Foundation. “The SMEC Foundation is still a new organisation, having been established only late last year”, he said. “However, we have already developed a small portfolio of projects in Australia and overseas to provide practical support to disadvantaged social groups and community organisations. I am especially pleased that we are able to support the fine work pioneered in Africa by the late Dr Hamlin and his wife over many years. They are truly a credit to Australia”.

The support for the Hamlin hospital is the SMEC Foundation’s first project in Africa. The wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia is the Foundation’s first project in environmental protection and conservation which Mr Price considered would become more prominent in the Foundation’s operations in the years ahead. The Foundation is already supporting the Sunrise Orphanage in Cambodia established by an Australian, Geraldine Cox.

The SMEC Foundation has previously provided support for home care services for people suffering with HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea as well as various educational projects in the Cooma-Monaro region. In co-operation with Engineers Australia (the publishing arm of the Institution of Engineers Australia) the Foundation is also supplying technical books to UNESCO for use in rebuilding of the Kabul University Library in Afghanistan.

SMEC Foundation Provides Support for HIV/AIDS Treatment in Papua New Guinea

The HIV/AIDS situation in Papua New Guinea is already quite serious and is growing rapidly. It is not clear exactly how many people are infected, but there are probably several hundred people with AIDS in Port Moresby alone. The resources available to the PNG Government and non-government organisations are limited and are divided between prevention and awareness activities and treatment of infected people.

The Friends Foundation is a non-government organisation dedicated to raising awareness of HIV/AIDS and to assisting infected people with domestic help. The Patron of the Friends Foundation, Lady Roslyn Morauta, received a cheque today from Mr Geoff Percival, SMEC’s General Manager International East and a director of the company.

“This is the first activity by the SMEC Foundation in Papua New Guinea and it is fitting that it should provide support for HIV/AIDS programs”, said Mr Percival. “This is a serious humanitarian problem for the country with important potential implications for national development. It is vital that government agencies and private organisations make every effort to contain the spread of the disease. The Friends Foundation provides valuable, practical support to those in need and we are happy to be able to help”.

The SMEC Foundation was established by the SMEC Group of Companies in 2001 to provide small scale grant support to community groups and development projects in Australia and overseas. It is chaired by Doug Price who is a former Chief Executive of the company.

SMEC is Australia’s most successful international consulting firm with operations from Africa and the Gulf region in the West through South and Central Asia to East Asia and the Pacific in the east. The company provides services in infrastructure development (including transport, energy and water), social infrastructure (capacity building, public sector reform, education and health care) and environmental analysis and planning. SMEC has a number of projects in Papua New Guinea.

The SMEC Foundation intends to identify other practical ways in which it can assist HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in the future.

Sailability is an international organisation which provides access to dingy sailing for physically and mentally disabled people. The Canberra branch was established in 1996 and uses the Access dinghy which was designed in Australia specifically for use by disabled people. For the past few years Sailability ACT Inc. has hosted the Australian National Access Dinghy Championships and an international regatta last year. The next regatta will be held on Lake Tuggeranong on the weekend of 2-3 March and will attract 130 sailors from around Australia as well as from New Zealand, Europe and Singapore.

Shortly before Christmas Sailability ACT was informed that its previous sponsor would no longer be able to support the regatta. Fortunately. SMEC and the NSW and ACT Masons were ready to step in to provide financial assistance. The regatta is also supported by Scouts ACT whose sea scouts help with launching and assisting the sailors in and out of the boats.

SMEC support was provided through the SMEC Foundation which was established last year to provide small-scale grant assistance to community groups and development projects in Australia and overseas. The Foundation was launched in Canberra in December. This is the first project which the Foundation has supported in Canberra. A cheque was presented recently to the Chairman of Sailability ACT Inc,, Mr Terry Peek, by the Chairman of the SMEC Foundation, Mr Doug Price, who is a former Chief Executive of SMEC.

SMEC is one of Australia’s most successful consulting firms with a network of offices in Australia and overseas. The company’s links with Canberra go back to the early 1970s. In the mid-1980s SMEC was involved with the design and construction supervision of the Lake Tuggeranong dam. More recently SMEC has been involved with a number of different projects in the ACT, including the Barton Highway extension and the restoration of the Tharwa bridge.

SMEC’s office in Fyshwick has more than 60 staff including the company’s Transport Infrastructure Group responsible for road design, highway construction supervision and traffic planning and Social Infrastructure Group dealing with education, health care and public sector reform. The Social Infrastructure Group received the 2001 Chief Minister’s Export Award in the services category.

The SMEC Foundation was established recently to provide small scale grant assistance to community groups and development projects in Australia and overseas. It has made financial contributions to a number of community activities in the Cooma-Monaro region in recent months, though this grant is the largest donation made to a local cause to date.

The Chairman of the SMEC Foundation, Doug Price, handed the cheque to Bill Rushton of the Centenary of Federation Committee, at the site of the new monument. Also present were the Chairman of the Committee, Tony McKenzie, the Mayor of Cooma-Monaro Shire Council, Cr Tony Kaltoum and Les Douglas, General Manager Corporate Development with SMEC.

Mr Price commented that the Foundation was pleased to be supporting the commemoration of what was arguably the most important political event in Australian history.

“The founding fathers of the Federation were concerned to put in place institutions and legal frameworks which would serve the Australian nation for decades and even centuries to come”, observed Mr Price. “This kind of long term vision and planning for the future was still dominant in this country half a century ago when the Snowy Mountains Scheme was conceived and built. Sadly, much of this kind of thinking has disappeared from public life in recent decades. If this monument to the Centenary of Federation can help to rekindle some readiness to think about long term directions as well as more immediate issues, I believe the Foundation’s support will have been worthwhile”.

The Centenary of Federation monument will be erected in Vale Street opposite the entrance to the gaol. Site preparation is already under way. The project is expected to be completed early in 2002.

Geraldine Cox joined the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs in 1970 and was posted shortly afterwards to Phnom Penh. At that time the Vietnam War was beginning to expand to encompass Cambodia and many thousands of rural people were fleeing to the capital to escape bombing in the eastern part of the country. The destructive impact of war on the Cambodian people and culture and the dramatic contrast between natural beauty and human suffering were aspects of her experience which Geraldine never forgot. In the early 1990s she began to visit the country again and quickly recognised the desperate plight of countless thousands of orphans displaced by years of war. There are no accurate estimates of the orphan population in Cambodia, but the number is certainly in excess of 200,000. There are some government orphanages which are very crowded and poorly funded as well as some Christian orphanages.

In 1993 Geraldine Cox was one of the founders of the Australia Cambodia Foundation, an Australian registered charity which operates the Sunrise Orphanage just outside of Phnom Penh. In 1996 she returned to Phnom Penh permanently, initially to work as an Executive Assistant to the Cabinet Director of the then First Prime Minister, HRH Prince Norodom Ranariddh. It was from that time onwards that the orphanage came to dominate her life. The Sunrise Orphanage is the only Australian privately operated, non-denominational orphanage in Cambodia. The children are encouraged to retain their Buddhist heritage.

The Sunrise Orphanage was required to move from its initial location in a former minefield outside Phnom Penh and is currently operating in a small rented villa in the city with five bedrooms for more than 60 children and staff. However, the Cambodian Government has made available a new 10-hectare site about 17 kilometres outside Phnom Penh on a 50-year free lease to permit construction of a permanent orphanage. Geraldine is now seeking about A$1 million for construction of a Children’s Village including not only the orphanage but also a series of other buildings.

The complex will provide accommodation for up to 100 children (with room for expansion) along with bathrooms, a medical clinic, classrooms and administrative areas.

The village will become as self-sufficient as possible. The staff and children will grow much of their own food in a garden area within the site. Children will also learn craft skills to make artefacts for sale to local people and foreign tourists.

Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation (SMEC) was one of the first Australian firms to respond to Geraldine’s appeal for help. SMEC is currently undertaking several construction projects in Cambodia and agreed to provide engineering design services free of charge, including hydrological investigations (the site is prone to occasional flooding), levy bank design, architectural design, structural designs and preparation of technical specifications and contract documents.

This work was carried out by SMEC’s locally registered subsidiary company, SMEC Cambodia Consulting (SCC) Ltd, which was formed in 1998. SCC Ltd now has a project management, design and construction supervision team consisting of a local country manager, engineers, architects, site supervisors and draftsmen supported by expatriate engineers, managers and supervisors.

It is SCC Ltd’s policy to maintain a continual program of education and training of its local staff and to use all their projects as “on-the-job” training. The goal is to develop the skills of the local staff to a level recognised as “international” and to gradually reduce the input of expatriate staff. It is envisaged that SCC will become a principally Cambodian engineering consultancy firm providing a level of service comparable to SMEC International and other international consultancy firms.

SMEC’s General Manager Technical, Ids Groenhout, explained that the creation of SCC Ltd formed part of a long tradition in SMEC’s operations. “For more than 30 years SMEC has been well known throughout Asia and beyond for the quality of the technical and vocational training delivered through our projects”, Mr Groenhout commented. “Today, we see the need to develop these skills within a corporate framework and to complement technical skills with business and management skills to ensure that we create viable consulting firms. The SMEC link will remain and in the longer term we envisage using SCC Ltd staff on SMEC projects in third countries. This is an exciting prospect”.

SMEC/SCC Ltd has also agreed to provide project management and construction supervision services during the construction phase. Part of this support has been financed through the SMEC Foundation which was established earlier this year to provide small-scale grants to community groups and development projects in Australia and overseas.

Last year Geraldine published an autobiographical book entitled “Home is Where the Heart Is” which describes her youth in Adelaide, her career as a diplomatic secretary and her deep attachment to the Cambodian orphans. Proceeds from the book are being used to support fundraising activities for the orphanage.

In August 2000 a documentary called “My Khmer Heart” was made about Geraldine’s Life and the children in Cambodia. The program subsequently won the Hollywood Film Festival Documentary of the Year Award. The distribution rights for the program were purchased by Home Box Office for national cable transmission which it is hoped will lead to financial support from the United States.

Process for Donations

Geraldine Cox has established an Australia-Cambodia Foundation to raise funds for the construction of the orphanage and its ongoing operating costs. Individuals and corporations can donate direct to the Foundation’s US dollar account in Cambodia through the following process:

Transfer to Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia A/C No. 0011580099 for further credit to Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank), Phnom Penh, Cambodia, favouring Sunrise Orphanage A/C No. 000833-7.

Contributions can also be made through Austcare, Locked Bag 15, Camperdown, NSW 1450 (quoting Geraldine’s Orphanage in Cambodia). Donations made through this process are tax deductible.

Contacts

The Foundation was established by the SMEC Group of Companies to provide small-scale grant assistance to community groups and development projects in Australia and internationally. The purpose of the Foundation is to consolidate links between SMEC and the various communities it serves. SMEC is one of Australia’s most internationally successful consulting firms with more than 850 staff and offices in most Australian capital cities and around the world.

The Foundation is chaired by Doug Price, A.M., who was the Chief Executive of SMEC from 1975 to 1988. Doug graduated in civil engineering from the University of Sydney and began his career with the Snowy Mountains Scheme. He joined SMEC on its establishment in 1970 and played a major part in building up the new organisation in Australia and overseas. He has extensive experience in international development and a strong background in community service.

Support from the SMEC Foundation is allocated by a Committee chaired by Doug Price which also includes Jill Hickson (an independent director of SMEC Holdings) and Les Douglas, General Manager Corporate Development. Allocations are made according to guidelines approved by the SMEC Group.

Initial projects supported by the Foundation were announced at the launch. These include:

Other proposals are currently under consideration.

The launch was attended by the Chief Operating Officer of SMEC Holdings, Mr Peter Busbridge, who welcomed the establishment of the Foundation as a major step forward in forging links between SMEC and the community. As far as can be ascertained, this is the first such initiative by an Australian consulting firm.

The launch was also attended by the newly appointed Chairman of SMEC Holdings, Mr Bob Scott.

The proceedings were introduced by the Mayor of Cooma-Monaro Shire, Cr Tony Kalthoum. Participants included representatives of business, government and the community.

Contacts

Peter Busbridge

Chief Operating Officer

SMEC Holdings

Tel: (02) 9925 5555

Les Douglas

General Manager Corporate Development