Hey! Good news! Remember how last year, so many of our kids were diagnosed as being malnourished during the regular doctor’s visit to the Community Centre? And how, with your help, we started the nutrition program, including regular fresh fruits and nutritious meals for our kids in the Centre?

Well, it is a roaring success. After a full year of sustained good nutrition, none of our kids is considered malnourished! We are beyond thrilled with this progress. We now need to focus on their parents and grandparents, as their nutrition status is not on par with the young ones.

This is part of our commitment to the Whole Health of our community—the entire person, family, and village—health on all fronts, including mental.

Which brings me to Silent September.

Another one is in the books, and I must tell you: this one was harder than any previous year and it got me thinking. I hope you don’t mind if I pass along some of those thoughts and get your feedback.

As a reminder for context, Silent September is the month we focus on raising money solely for mental health needs in our community. Those of us who can participate choose a certain amount of time to remain silent during September, and our supporters pledge a certain amount of money per hour of the time we spend without communicating with other people to this program.

We do this to draw attention to those among us who, though they may be able to speak, are voiceless in their communities. They are unheard, not necessarily because people do not care, but because their abilities do not lend themselves to fully communicating their thoughts, fears, joys, and needs.

The money we raise goes to support mental health-related interventions at Heartprint. The work is essential, and the results can be remarkable.

This year, my Silence Commitment was for 60 hours—two and a half days.

It renewed my empathy for those among us constantly challenged by some form of silence. And it was exhausting. It frustrated almost everyone around me because I could not answer their questions, and we were so incredibly busy it created some hardship in our efforts to ease the hardships of others.

Other people started to whisper around me; they felt like they also needed to be quiet or even stop talking. It made them very uncomfortable and maybe even a little insecure.

Everyone felt off-balance. At the end, everyone was exhausted, not just me.

There were multiple lessons in this for me. First, this feeling of exhaustion and being off-balance with the world is a daily reality for many in our little community. Second, it is tough to abdicate my daily responsibility of keeping our programs running.

After all, we focus on whole health - mind, body, and soul. Houses, volunteers, Community Centre. And the myriad pieces need to be kept moving, flexing and bending, fitting into their right corners, addressing so many needs to assure good outcomes - like the new news that our kids have all improved health-wise according to the doctor’s visit this month!

I wonder if there might be a way to achieve similar or better results during Silent September without causing hardship to the many people who rely on my consistent, daily voice within Heartprint.

I will still commit to being silent for some designated number of hours next September.

But what if we all came together to build a Heartprint Silent Army, where dozens of us pledge silence for just one hour? Or three? More of us invested, spreading the love across more landscapes, raising more awareness, and meeting our financial goals for our mental health programs.

We have a whole year to organize and train! We can start a WhatsApp Group and share tips and ideas. For example, playing music really does help.

It’s a global undertaking for our small community here in northern Cambodia where everything you do to help us is essential and valued.

We would all be in this community together - recruiting, training, and sharing! To be quiet, totally quiet, for just a short period next September.

Are you in? Will you join our Silent Army?

Let me know. You can email me:

With gratitude and hope,

Wendy

Recruiting: A Silent Army for Heartprint Whole Health