Sunday, September 03, 2006

Trudeaus build a foundation on sharing

By Elizabeth Eidlitz
Boston Herald (Mass., USA)
Sunday, September 3, 2006


The Trudeau family of Concord pose at the playground at the Roteang Orphanage in Cambodia that they assembled.

To that classic back-to-school assignment, "How I Spent my Summer Vacation," many students will respond with descriptions of lazy days on Cape Cod beaches, camp canoe trips, perhaps even overviews of whirlwind introductions to Europe.

Not school-age children in the Trudeau family of Concord, however.

Tom, 17, Jacqui, 14, and Andrew, 12, were actively involved in a uniquely designed family vacation. Instead of spending a month at their house in New Hampshire, the Trudeaus volunteered to spend 10 August days assembling blue, yellow, and red metal components for two slides, towers, and a rope bridge into a spectacular playground for 63 children at the Roteang Orphanage in Cambodia.

Funded by a Lutheran School in Lakeland, Fla., ordered from Thailand, and transported to Roteang Village in more than a dozen soggy cardboard boxes on a 12-hour drive along rain-drenched, mud-to-the axles roads, the construction is the latest remarkable accomplishment within the 16 projects of The Sharing Foundation (www.SharingFoundation.org), which include a farming project, English school, sewing school and computer school.

Despite high humidity and 100-plus degree temperatures, Thomas Trudeau, a contractor, his wife, Ann, president of Walden Mortgage Company, with their sons and daughter, studied minimal assembly instructions, measured, and leveled, fitted poles, ladders, platforms, slide components, nuts and bolts together for Operation Playground, assisted by Sharing Foundation employees.

"The orphanage head nanny kept us supplied with water, and the locals knew how to mix and pour concrete for the footings," Ann Trudeau said. "The tough part was finding the right bolts and tools to secure the equipment to the footings.

"Another challenge was attaching to one side of the playground the 8-x-4 foot rock climbing wall that we'd decided to build on site. Finally, we bolted on the handholds we'd been carrying all over Southeast Asia."

"It's probably the first climbing wall in Cambodia," says Dr. Nancy W. Hendrie, the Concord pediatrician who founded TSF eight years ago. "As soon as we were finished, all the children, except the babies, swarmed the structure at once with great whoops of joy."

The Trudeaus even had time to paint the orphanage water towers.

"My daughter had the idea of having the kids put their handprints on the tower -- wild fun for them," says Ann, "and I taught Vuthea, a 14-year-old orphan who is quite an artist, the concept of a mural which he promptly painted on the water tower. It is beautiful!"

Returning to Concord, Andrew concluded, "This experience will stay in my head forever. Seeing that place and coming back here will affect my life hugely."

Jacqui, looking at her room, realized, "I don't need any of the junk I have."

"I now become irritable about things I would never before have been struck by," says Tom, "such as people throwing out a half eaten plate of salad, or the gigantic money tornado that is our country."

"We grew as individuals and as a family," Ann Trudeau notes. "We had a great adventure and we feel good about doing something nice.

"One of the best things we got out of the trip was the first-hand knowledge that one person can change the world because that is what Dr. Hendrie is doing. Her outstanding foundation has made a huge impact, one child at a time, in Cambodia. If The Sharing Foundation has touched your life, you most likely have a skill that will help you survive forever."

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