Building their Future

Darceys reach out to Cambodian orphans

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STORY SUMMARY »

Hal Darcey, who founded Honolulu-based Darcey Builders in 1974, has found retirement bliss at the office.

Instead of golfing or fishing or engaging in other popular retirement pursuits, Darcey is spending up to seven days a week improving the lives of Cambodian children.

These days, Darcey is using his building skills to turn the Email Foster Parents International program, which was created by fellow Rotarian Rob Hail, into an official nonprofit that will use e-mail to link hundreds of orphaned children with responsible caring donors in Hawaii and elsewhere. He, his wife Lei, and other Hawaii volunteers have turned a modest second-floor addition at Darcey Builders into a corporate office that will expand the work started by Hail and the Rotary Club of Honolulu Sunrise.

Darcey and other volunteers are busy raising funds to bring some of the orphans that live at the Future Light Orphanage of Worldmate in Phnom Penh to Hawaii on a cultural exchange. And, they are looking at ways not only to meet the children's subsistence needs, but to expand the range of educational and trade programs that are offered at the orphanage.

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Hal Darcey, who started Honolulu-based Darcey Builders in 1974, has retired; however, he's still in the building business.

Benefit performance The children of the Future Light Orphanage of Worldmate (FLOW) will perform traditional Cambodian music and dance at 7 p.m. on Sept. 13 at the Mamiya Theater to benefit the orphanage where they live. Reserved tickets can be purchased for $100, $75, $50. A party on the plaza also will take place from 5 to 6:30 p.m. where ticket holders may interact with FLOW students and staff and enjoy Cambodian food as well as beer, wine, and soft drinks. Silk products made at the orphanage also will be available for purchase. Call Email Foster Parents International at 545-3676 to purchase tickets. Checks also can be sent to Email Foster Parents International c/o 501 Sumner St., #605, Honolulu, HI, 96817, or orders paid for through Visa or MasterCard can be faxed to 533-0497. The entire cost of the performance is tax deductible. For more information via e-mail, send questions to: sponsor@emailfosterparents.org. Free performances The children of the Future Light Orphanage of Worldmate will share their talents with Hawaii by performing traditional Cambodian music and dance at 4 p.m. on Sept. 7 at the Central Union Church. They also will perform at 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 9 for residents of Kahala Nui. On Sept. 10, they will participate in a cultural exchange with students at MidPacific Institute.

These days, Darcey is using his building skills to turn the Email Foster Parents International program, which was created by fellow Rotarian Rob Hail, into an official nonprofit that will use e-mail to link hundreds of orphaned children with responsible caring donors in Hawaii and elsewhere. He, his wife Lei, and other Hawaii volunteers have turned a modest second-floor addition at Darcey Builders into a corporate office that will expand the work started by Hail and the Rotary Club of Honolulu Sunrise.

Instead of golfing or fishing or engaging in other popular retirement pursuits, Darcey is spending up to seven days a week at the office shoring up the lives of the Cambodian children, who have crept into his heart.

He and other volunteers are busy raising funds to bring some of the orphans that live at the Future Light Orphanage of Worldmate (FLOW) in Phnom Penh to Hawaii on a cultural exchange. And, they are looking at ways not only to meet the children's subsistence needs, but to expand the range of educational and trade programs that are offered at the orphanage.

"I'm busier now than I ever was," Darcey said. "But it's very satisfying. I feel that what I do now has great value. I didn't always feel that way in business where success is often measured by your product or your service or your profit."

Lei Darcey, who still keeps the books for the family business, also has scaled back to lend her expertise to help her husband grow the nonprofit. The couple has found that these days their bottom line stretches all the way to Cambodia.

Although Hal Darcey has been an e-mail foster parent since 2001, it is the lasting memories of a 2004 trip to visit the orphans at FLOW that gave shape to his retirement plans.

"We noticed that their classroom was too small and inadequate," Darcey said. "It was an opportunity to use some of my construction skills in a way that I don't normally use them to help the orphanage get funding, find a contractor and eventually build a new school."

Darcey said that he was so taken with Madam Phaly Nuon and her brood of some 350 orphaned children that he went back to FLOW for another visit in 2007, this time bringing Lei.

"We stayed five days at the orphanage and really developed a bond with these kids," she said.

Now, the couple takes delight in encouraging others to experience the fulfillment that they have received from participating in the foster parent program, Lei Darcey said.

"Just talking about our involvement has encouraged others to get involved," she said. "Many of our friends have become foster parents or donated money to FLOW."

For Hail, Darcey's willingness to help build on the program he created is a dream come true.

"I think it's great that he and his wife, who are phasing out of the business world and into the world of philanthropy, are using their business skills and resources to help others," Hail said. "This is also true of the other key people who are supporting the Email Foster Parent Program and the Cambodian Children's Cultural Tour."

For Nuon and her children, the Darceys' involvement means much more. She is hoping that the nonprofit will give the orphanage a stronger foundation in which to support the many hopes and dreams that the children have for a brighter tomorrow.

"There's no welfare system in Cambodia. The kids are on the street unless they find an organization like Phaly's that will give them a place to live," Hal Darcey said. "For many of these children, the orphanage is the first time that they haven't had to worry about their safety or having enough to eat."

While the diminutive Nuon is a fierce advocate for Cambodia's lost children, she needs more resources to care for her growing brood. With adoption to the U.S. still restricted, fewer orphans are able to leave her care, Nuon said, during an interview last fall at FLOW.

"We used to have adoptions, now almost no one leaves me," Nuon said, as she watched the children sing, dance and play games in an open-air pavilion seemingly oblivious to the challenges that their future could hold.

Nuon's resources are stretched so thin that the children subsist on little more than rice, and their tattered clothing bears the worn remnants of the American cartoon characters and brands that more fortunate children know to covet. Still, the austere orphanage is warm and welcoming and a far cry from the dark, scary places where Nuon and many of the children have been.

"We call ourselves the Future Light Orphanage of Worldmate because the children who live here are learning the skills necessary to lift themselves out of poverty towards a brighter future," Nuon said in her mission statement. "We want to equip these children with skills needed to become the future leaders of Cambodia."

The orphanage, which Nuon opened in 1992, came about as a result of the many tragedies that she experienced in her own life, which changed dramatically in 1975 when Khmer Rouge communist troops forcibly evacuated Phnom Penh.

At the time, Nuon was a 32-year-old professional working mother with three children and one on the way. Though she was nine months pregnant, Nuon was forced out of her home in Cambodia's capital city and ordered to make a multiday trek into the countryside to conform to Pol Pot's vision of a new agrarian order.

"The blood was running down my legs," she said, a stray tear traveling down her cheek.

Nuon recalls that as the chaos surrounded her, she strapped thousands of dollars in currency and heirlooms to her body and fled her comfortable home, along with her children and siblings, for what would become nearly two decades of horror. Along the way, Nuon's first husband died of starvation. She dug his grave and buried him herself.

Only two of Nuon's four natural-born children kept starvation at bay to survive Cambodia's infamous genocide; however she managed to find the strength to live through that agony.

"I had to be strong enough. We keep working so that we cannot remember the bad memory," Nuon said.

While the first group of orphans came to Nuon because they lost their family during the conflicts, now most of them come because the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS has taken one or more of their parents, Nuon said.

"About 60 to 80 percent of the children have lost both of their parents," she said. "The other 20 percent or so have a father or a mother, but often they are too sick to care for the children or provide food for them. Now, they are my children. When they cry, I tell them that I will be their mama if they will let me."

Nuon's hopes and dreams for the many children she now calls her own are wide and deep enough to almost fill the caverns of her broken heart. Her wishes like festival lanterns have traveled across the ocean where they have been picked up by the Darceys and other volunteers.

While survival is still a focus for Nuon and her children, offshore support from volunteers in Hawaii has allowed them the luxury of planning for tomorrow instead of just worrying about today. As the children age and are forced to leave the orphanage at age 18, Nuon must help them find a way to stay safe and fed, she said.

"We need to think about where these children will end up when they graduate," Hal Darcey said. "For many, even a college education will not bring about a way to earn a living."

A self-made businessman, Darcey believes that while academics are important to the children, some of them may benefit more from learning a trade.

"I went to trade school for high school and graduated with a GED equivalent," Darcey said. "I saw myself as a carpenter and those skills have provided a good life for me and for my family."

Now perhaps, in his retirement, Darcey will use those same skills to build a better life for the many orphan children who now make up his extended family.