Nurses' Labour of Love

From left, Therese Jeffs and Kim Brooks have been training nurses in Cambodia. PHOTO/BEN FRASER

Two Rotorua nurses have embarked on a quest to help educate nursing students in Cambodia.

Therese Jeffs and Kim Brooks of Whare Aroha Home and Hospital have just returned from their latest trip to Phnom Penh where they are actively working to educate nurses from surrounding villages and raise the standard of care.

Therese, who co-ordinates the sponsoring of the Cambodian students, says it was 2006 when she first visited the country as part of a medical team.

"I trained as a nurse 40-something years ago, and then I retrained in business and health management and worked as a consultant in health. I was looking at working with World Vision and at the time they had been working in Cambodia.

"As a side bar, an opportunity to go over to Cambodia as part of an American-based medical team popped up on my radar and so I went, and I fell in love with it. I guess it sounds really weird, that I fell in love with poverty, but the people are absolutely beautiful and the poverty just really got to me and I just wanted to make a difference," she says.

"You know how you have those moments that just change you, well for me, that moment was when I met my interpreter for the week. She has an orphanage and she rescues children off the street. She told me her story about how she had been sold into the sex industry when she was three years old, and was rescued by an American group when she was eight.

"She was then put into an American orphanage where she learned to speak English. And that really confronted me. So, I spent about six months after I came back, just trying to figure out what I was going to do."

Therese and Kim teamed up and together with four other medical professionals from New Zealand and Cambodia, they formed Impact Charitable Trust.

Kim leads the postgraduate programme for registered nurses in partnership with Rotha Keo and Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, and says her work with Impact has changed her life.

"When Therese approached me in 2008, I had no idea how bad things were over there. So I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what that something was. Therese already had a connection of people that she had met on her trips. We decided that we would do some general healthcare work in the orphanages, and do some work teaching at the university, but I didn't realise how hard that was going to be," she says.

"I spoke far too fast, and then I realised they had no idea what I was talking about. So we have had to adapt to that."

Therese, who makes several trips to Cambodia each year, says this is all self-funded.

"Some people work and save to buy a new car, we do this. It has taken quite a long time to really sort out the nursing training and various options, because the government is quite corrupt. The nurses are undervalued and the quality of care is so bad, and we need to enhance their skills.

"We have members of our team based there, but our aim is to develop their skills, so they can go on to train others and become self-sufficient.We want to focus on getting more sponsorship so we can train more people, and get them working within their communities.

"We get sponsors from wherever we can, our friends, family. So don't be our friend, you might be compelled to sponsor someone!"

To find out how you can get involved with Impact Charitable Trust visit www.impactcharitabletrust.org.nz.