Firstly, thank you all for your support of this magazine and the good works we are able to do as a result. Ethical Much is the collective of the subscribers, without you it’s nothing, so we want to say thank you so much.
These good works are your good works.
The UK good deeds are still ongoing, even whilst we’ve been putting this magazine together today, November 21st, someone has phoned and texted, and we’ll probably be taking them some shopping tomorrow.
Once again this edition is mostly Cambodia, with the benefit that both me and Muylen were both there this time. We were there in September / October, and are going back in December for a 300 person formal wedding, ours! We’ll make sure to include some of the hundreds of photos in the next edition..:)
We did some life changing good works for this edition, it’s such a pleasure to be able to give and help people in need. Enjoy the magazine, it’s a beautiful thing we have created together, it’s small, and personal, and good.
Thank you for being part of it.
We really appreciate it, and you, and all that you give and do.
If you feel moved by any of the individuals or families situations in this edition, please do consider donating something extra.
£20 or £30 can make a really significant impact for them. We are going back to Cambodia in December, and again in March 2025, so we can be your hands on the ground delivering support to the people you feel for.
Please let us know if you would like to do something like that.
We hope we can make a real and lasting difference for some of the people there. Many thanks and God bless you, Bird and Muylen
Ethical Much
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07535 670 581
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We hope you’ve had a good year, it’s been a strange one for us, far apart, then together, having surgery, recovery from surgery, quite a rollercoaster of a year really, but aren’t they always somehow?
Here’s Muylen experiencing snow for the very first time in Bingham Park!
Thank you, and God bless you so much.
And ... HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
Love Bird and Muylen
PS ... If you like this little magazine, do feel free to buy a subscription online for a friend as a Christmas present ... x
Twice as giving ...x
EthicalMuch Ltd
16 - 18 Station Road Sheffield S35 2XH
Reg. 11856732
07535 670 581 HARK!
CEO Jesus Christ
EthicalMuch.com
Hello@EthicalMuch.com
Sheffield 864
A whole chicken, a loaf of tiger bread, everything for spagbol, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, mackerel fillets, a big block of cheese, around two dozen tins and jars... when we started EM back in 2020 we gave the best food parcels in the pandemic. We still do.
£63.52 from subscriber fund.
Sheffield 865
I’m aware that many times the people we support with food also live in flats that are cold and aesthetically miserable. So when I saw this fluffy mattress cover in Aldi, for £14.99, I thought it would be appreciated. It can also double as a fluffy blanket, or throw over a sofa. Giving people comfort, physical comfort, is just as important as food, and often overlooked as being a luxury. But it’s not really a luxury. It’s a human requirement for wellbeing of body, mind and soul.
£81.84 from subscriber fund.
Sheffield 866
I had the idea that it would be nice to give some unsolicited food presents to people in a tower block where everyone is poor and in need, but not everyone would know to ask for help, or want to ask. The lady we support who lives there also thought it was a nice idea, and she knows many of the people and helped us deliver the dozen shopping bags, knocking on doors and giving them a bag, and where there was no answer, leaving it on the door handle. We included one of my ‘Just A Little Book’ books, as an extra free gift.
A dozen bags, each containing the items shown below. I wanted to spend £5 per person, got to the till, and it was £59.86 in total. £4.99 each. Perfect.
Cambodia 196
Her name’s Mey mom, 48 year olds and her present address: Khnar village, Chreav commune, Siem Reap province. Her husband death many years ago. She has one daughter and lives with her daughter. She is staying at home to look after and to take care of her 2 grandsons. Her daughter who is going out to earn money.
Items provided: Rice , Fish sauce, Soy sauce, fish cans, sugar, salt and soap and transportation.
Total expenses: $ 20
Thank you very much to Mr. Bird who is established Ethical much for helping people in need. God blessed you. Muylen and people in community in Cambodia.
Cambodia 197
His name’s Van Kea, 52 years old. His wife name’s Ma Narin, 50 years old. Both of them are construction worker. They can earn income between 7.50$ - 8.75$ per day. They have 2 children (1 daughter and 1 son).
Items provided: Rice, Fish sauce, Soy sauce, sugar, salt, soap, fish cans and transportation.
Total expenses: $ 20
Thank you and God blessed you Mr. Bird. Muylen and Khmer community people
Cambodia 198
His name’s Tha Thoy, 25 years old. His wife name’s Uch Asa, 39 years old. They have 3 children. Their job: Cut plastic bottles worker. They can earn between 3.85$ - $ 5 per day. Items provided: Rice , fish can, fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, salt , soap and transportation. Total expenses: $ 20
Cambodia 199
Her name’s Khut Map, 41. Her husband name’s Kim Chea, 31. They have 1 daughter. Their job is construction worker, can earn money between 7.50$ - 8.50$ per day. Nowadays, they don’t have any building to work. Items provided: Rice, fish cans, fish sauce, Soy sauce, sugar, salt, soap and transportation. Total expenses: $ 20
Thank you very much for your generous support to change people life to get better and hope. God blessed you, Muylen and Khmer community people.
Cambodia 200
She doesn’t have a husband. She doesn’t have a job . She doesn’t have any income. Her brother who is provided food to them and some time get from community chief. Ethical much provided Rice, fish cans, fish sauce, soy sauce, salt, sugar , soap and transportation. Total expenses: $ 20 God blessed you for serving.
Cambodia 201
Hark. So the plan is to go to a place called Living Water Farm, run by a guy called Vatanak. The farm is a project he created on his families land and the purpose is to provide a range of services for the poor people in the hill community surrounding it.
You an see many of these people in the previous edition, and you’ll probably recognise some of them from the photos in the coming pages.
I’m told one of the problems Vatanak would like to address with the community is their unwillingness to share with each other. This is a symptom of ingrained poverty. They’re so used to being in survival mode with a lack of almost everything it’s making them less loving to each other, and more afraid and self focused.
It’s quite typical of impoverished communities to be like this, we often think of them as being somehow idealised, pooling their resources, but human nature is not like that, not for the rich, nor the well off, nor the desperately poor. Poverty is aggravating the situation and degrading their humanity towards each other, that’s the hard truth of it, so we had a bit of an idea.
Rather than give a food parcel to each person or family, we would bring them all together in one place, and ask for five volunteers to distribute the food and supplies to everyone. The aim was to allow them to have an abundance to share and give to each other, and for them to be the ones doing it, not us.
If they could be the one giving to each other, and we were almost forgotten about, that would be ideal. And we wanted to make it fun, a bit of a game, rather than the conventional positions of giver and receivers.
So we bought about 60 bottles of sauces and oil, a similar number of tins of fish, loads of hygiene supplies, about 50kg of rice, and God knows how many packets of noodles, and off we went to try this new way of giving and sharing.
Vatanak welcomes us and shows us the main building, built from donations from America, it serves many functions, including an education hub where the children learn computer skills and typing, also a place of worship, a meeting room, a kitchen, and dorms for people, especially young people, who need to get away from their home situation for whatever reason.
Then all the community gathers in the main room and Vatanak explains the game and five volunteers from the young people are requested. Me and Muylen sit on the sidelines and do little more than enjoy watching.
Vatanak gave us a tour around the farm, size wise, think the main field in Endcliffe Park. But tropical hot, and a bit jungley.
He’s trying to make it work as a community farm of sorts, there’s a couple of cows, some chicken and ducks, a pool for frogs, and various crops growing, trying to grow, including coconut trees, bamboo, and a few others. It’s hard, the soil is sandy, one plan we are working on is to get some goats, which can be tethered and allowed to eat everything within their range. This will have the effect of removing the grass and shrubbery whilst fertilising the soil for a crop, perhaps beans or peas. It feels a lot harder to get anything done there. The heat, the lack of heavy machinery, but persistence is fertile.
Afterwards we all gathered for a community photo, everyone in good spirits after the enjoyment of both giving and receiving.
If you want to get a better picture of the experience, I suggest you join Nuffield Gym, go and sit in the sauna for an hour, dressed in trousers and t shirt, then, still in the sauna, eat a bowl of rice and some black chicken soup. Then stay in the sauna for the next 24hours with food poisoning.
We then went on a guided tour of the region, Vatanak driving the community people back to their homes in the process. At one point he took us through a rubbish recycling yard, and told us about the owner, who started out as a rubbish collector, picking up plastic bottles from the side of the road, and built himself a substantial enterprise, big trucks, a big yard, men and women working for him. I shook hands with the guy, short, stocky, very strong and healthy despite, or perhaps, because he lives in an environment that would put most Westerners, including myself, in hospital within a week.
The curious thing is that whilst he’s actually wealthy now, even perhaps by Western standards, he still lives with his wife and children in a large elevated shack in the middle of the rubbish yard. I joke with Vatanak that he worked hard and brought himself up from the bottom, and he brought the bottom up with him.
I respect him for what he’s achieved, he now employs people, and through them keeps the entire region free from recyclable litter, he’s staying in his community, improving it, being part of it, and in doing so demonstrating to everyone else what can be achieved. He was probably looked down on when he was a litter collector, but I get the feeling he didn’t care then and doesn’t care now. God bless him!
You might recognise this dwelling from one of the previous editions, it looked familiar to me and Muylen explained how we had previously supported the person who lives there.
It was really heartening to meet some of the people for the first time, I recognised them from the magazine but hadn’t been the one to meet them in person.
Then we went for a stroll through the jungle via these strange steps, down to a kind of lake...
Hard work, hard lives, good day.
As we were driving around and dropping people off Vatanak told us that sadly, one of the boys who was helping distribute the food to everyone else had some of his own portion taken from his chair whilst he was serving.
Seems like our attempt to teach giving and sharing had only reached some of the people!
I asked Vatanak to take us to the boys house, and I chatted with him through Muylen’s translation, told him we were really sorry that had happened, and gave him $25, which more than made up for the missing items he had lost.
We can’t always prevent bad, but we can give good. Total spend ... $286.27
Cambodia 202
We decided to do some spontaneous street level good works. Phnom Penh is the kind of place where you can just drive around and see person after person you would like to help. In truth that’s one of the problems, there’s so many people in need, where do you start, and where do you end.
You just start, and end when you have to.
We did a shop at Makro, the plan being to buy five big food parcels, a sack of the very best rice, a box of noodles, a packet of Himalayan pink rock salt, a bottle of good quality fish sauce, a bottle of good oil, soy sauce, strips of chicken powder seasoning and soup base, a dozen coffee sachets, a tub of biscuits, and a smaller packet of biscuits, packets of washing powder, tooth brushes, tooth paste, soaps, in total each food parcel cost $42.07, we bought the best of each item, and then added 2 stacks of 100 x 1000 Riel, Cambodian money. Each 1000R note is 25c, so each stack was $25, and we planned to give 2 to each recipient.
$210.35 + $250 cash in total.
A big shop and $50, a life changing amount for some people.
Cambodia 202 first delivery
First guy. He’s blind, and has a crippled hand. He told us he used to be a monk, then, around 12 years ago, he was travelling in a car between pagoda, and a duck walked out into the road. The car swerved, crashed, and he lost his eyes and much of his right hand. The guy with his is his helper / carer, he sings in the street, and people donate money.
Cambodia 203
Second guy.
This guy was walking along pushing a little trolley, around 5:30 in the evening. We stopped and, chatted, he sells ice creams, makes about $3 a day. We asked if we could give him a little help, and gave him one of the food parcels from the car, plus the $50 cash.
He was very moved, and was briefly sad that he had nothing to give in return. So I said one ice cream would cover it, and we were all happy again.
Cambodia 204
Muylen wanted to find and help a cyclo driver. They are usually old men, a cyclo is a tricycle with a seat on the front for passengers. It’s the lowest rung on the transportation ladder, and few people like to use their service. He told us he only earns a few dollars a day, and has a wife in the province, but he only get’s to visit every few months at most because of not having enough money. He sleeps on the cyclo. The food and $50 will mean he can go home, head high, and stay for the public holidays, perhaps even take a few weeks holiday himself. He’s 72 years old.
Cambodia 205
Another cyclo driver. Again, just earning a few dollars a day, $5 on a very rare day, $0 on some days, especially if it’s raining. Muylen asked about his past, he said something along the lines of he did have a family, but he lost them in the war. For Cambodians, ‘the war’ is the civil war, a terrible genocide of 1/3 of the people by another 1/3 of the people. The spirit of forgiveness must be very strong in them to move on as they have. This gentleman was 71, and the food and money will elevate his life significantly.
Cambodia 206
As we were saying farewell to the chap above, this sweet family pulled over in their sort of moto cart, which might even be where they live, it wasn’t clear. They started chatting, the little girls were delightful, really sweet, and the mother was explaining to Muylen how they were poor and in need. We could see that, so gave the final bag of shopping plus $50 to them, $25 to the mum and $25 to the dad. The girls started on the biscuits straight away. We complemented the parents on how lovely a family they were.
Cambodia 207
Muylen had to attend a meeting so I went off on my own for a few hours, taking a taxi to the banks of the Mekong river. This lady was selling bird seed, for people to feed the pigeons, and I wanted to help her. She was saying she had five bags to sell, and I indicated I only wanted one. She raised one finger to show that it would be 1 1000R note, as I had a stack of 100 of them to give. I gave her the stack, and I could see her brain working, she knew she could accept the full stack, but thought that I didn’t understand the value of the money. She then, and I could see it was costing her effort to do the right thing, took one note from the stack and offered me the 99 back. I appreciated her honesty, and knew that she was giving back what was probably a week’s wages, so I took the single note back and indicated she should keep the 99.
99000R / $24.75
Cambodia 208
Strolling further along the river bank I saw a sight that I knew was going to become a lovely good deed. This lady was selling birds, from cages, people pay a dollar or two for a pair of birds, then release them and make a wish, or ask for a blessing or some such. I told her I wanted to buy all of them. So I did, then we released them all. She ran off and came back moments later with another cage, and those were bought and released as well. I think it cost about $100 in total! Best money I could have spent, and the bird sellers had a really good days business. Helping poor people be free from poverty and and freeing birds... what’s not to love.
400,000R ..... $100
Cambodia 209
God bless you always. I bought more bird seed, from the young boys and the old ladies, and to the disabled guy shown here. I was paying the young lads to feed the birds, and there was quick a flock surrounding us, a flock of people and birds, and everyone was in high spirits and really enjoying the spectacle and the good days trade they were all having.
Giving people money by buying from them is one of the nicest ways to give. It makes them feel good, about their work, and rewards them for it, they’re just doing what they normally do, sell bird food by the Mekong.
Today they earned more than they usually would in a week, and it will be an exciting and memorable day for them. It was fun for everyone, a real pleasure.
400,000R ..... $100
Cambodia
210
I got back in the taxi and we collected Muylen from her meeting at the other side of town. Then we heard another blind girl, singing at the road junction. We stopped and listened, enjoying the music, Muylen translated some of the lyrics to me, it was a love song.
We gave her 200,000R .... $50.
Cambodia 211
A few days later myself and Muylens brother, Long Hey, went to Decathalon and bought a dozen or so balls, footballs mostly, a few basket balls and volley balls, and also bagged and boxed up some packages of rice. The red boxes we had printed, by the printer who was doing our wedding invitations, on one side it says Jesus Loves You, in Khmer, and has a cross, on the reverse is John 3:16, again in Khmer. The printer didn’t charge us for them, which was very kind of him. Inside each box is a zip seal bag with just under a kilo of rice in it. We headed to a slum area in the centre of Phnom Penh, where the train tracks run. And started to hand them out.
Cambodia
It very quickly got rather hectic, in a good natured way, as you might be able to imagine. We did our best to maintain some sort of order, and all the rice and balls flew out in a few minutes.
I’m pretty sure the kids will soon learn that sharing a ball is more enjoyable than keeping it to yourself.
$126.44
Cambodia 212
For me, giving toys to children is one of my most satisfying good works. The very first time I went to Cambodia, in 2019, I visited women and children in a prison, and gave them toys, and I remember this one girl, maybe two or three, throwing a little bird toy into the air and catching it. I’d paid £1 in a charity shop in Sheffield for that toy, and if all I had achieved in that trip was that one toy into the hands of that one girl, it would have all been worth it. As it was I met Muylen, and we saved someone’s life, but that’s another story...
So, a few days later we set off with a car load of about 70 stuffed toys looking for people to give them to... on the way... met this guy, with missing legs, from the war, probably a mine, gave him a couple of $25 stacks...
400,000R ... $50
Cambodia 213
We parked up, again near the train tracks but this time a good half hour drive out of the main city.
Muylen handed out the toys, and the children came out of seemingly nowhere and collected them, then ran off, and would come back minutes later with friends, brothers, sisters....
$135 on soft toys + $32.50 on a taxi for the day.
Cambodia 213 cont.
Jesus loves you rice and soft toys for everyone...
Again, it’s a lovely way to give, just freely handing out soft toys to every child that comes. Some even got out of passing tuk tuks to get theirs. Giving is, I think, the best and most enjoyable thing to do with one’s time.
Cambodia 214
Driving on from the tracks, this little girl grabs my attention. She was on her own, in a vacant space, just sitting in the dirt, in her own little world.
I asked the taxi to stop and turn around, and Muylen went over to her with a soft toy.
She chatted with her for a few moments, and came back, and I asked her to give the girl a second toy, so the toys could be friends together in the girls imagination.
I could tell the little girl had something like autism, and maybe was non verbal, but as she held those toys, and waved to me, as I waved to her, I knew she was special, as some children like her are. I called out God bless you, and she nodded, her soul understood. It was like she was an angel.
Sometimes I meet children like her, there’s a similar girl who used to go to the same church as I do, it’s like they’re able to communicate with God in heaven, and unable to communicate with people here on earth.
It is a mystery. But this I know. She was a heavenly being.
This is a very strange world we live in.
Cambodia 214
We took some of the Jesus Loves You / John 3:16 rice boxes to a fellow Englishman, Pastor Mark, and his Malay wife, they’d recently located to Phnom Penh, and Mark was teaching in a Christian school there. He gave the boxes to the children and sent us the photos. Maybe one day we could start our own brand of rice ... With a free stuffed toy inside every bag. And some words of compassion and truth...
Which? Car Mechanic...
Dave. He knows everything. Mostly about cars.
Daves top tip of season: When you live in a hilly place like Sheffield, it’s really easy to get into the habit of holding the car on the clutch on hills, in traffic, at red lights, and so on. Sometimes we think this makes us a good driver, being able to feel and hear the exact point at which the prefect pressure is applied to keep our cars static on an incline. It may be moderately skilful, and quietly satisfying, but it can be a very expensive practice. Clutches don’t like to be used like that, they wear out, grind down, and before long you’ve driven a thousand miles and the clutch has had ten thousand of wear. Next thing you know, you need a new one, and that’s between many hundreds and several thousands of pounds, depending on the car you drive. And of course where you take it to get it fixed. Dave charges the least he can. Most garages charge the opposite. Personally I’m pretty sure I’m guilty of clutch abuse, and I know I don’t ever use the handbrake at traffic lights. What do I do? I can’t even remember, it all just becomes habit doesn’t it?
But today is a good day to be reminded of using the handbrake, especially as I parked my car this morning and came back to find it propped against the wall of Dore community centre, it having rolled down the car park all of its own accord without me even having to do anything. A few bumper scratches and a pushed in grill, Dave fixed it.
Also... Winter is coming.... Update.... It’s already here! Brrrrrrr anyone got a scraper thing for the car window?
Dave suggests EM subscribers fly by and get their car checked over for winter. Better to do it before the even more cold happens. Check anti freeze, oil, this kind of thing. Stay frosty. X
Ecclesall Garage are members of EthicalMuch. Best. Garage. Ever. At the very very top of Murray Road.
