Charity Works
Helping to Change the world and Improve Lives.
Since 2013 our small family-owned company has supported both local Australian and International people in need. Apart from many small contributions, our major impacts have been in aiding Cancer Research in Australia and Health and Child Care and Education in Cambodia.
Sustainability Milestones:
Sustainable Bottled Water
AEA Luxury Tours aspires to helping make the world clear and healthier by moving away from single use plastics. Our tours provide Just Water to our clients. JUST was inspired by a young man’s quest to do better. While learning to surf, a ten-year-old Jaden Smith saw a plastic bottle floating next to him in the water. Unable to shake the image of plastic polluting the Pacific, he decided to do something. What began as an introduction to the impact humans have on the environment became a Smith family obsession to do good. 88% of the materials used to make the cartons start out as plants—trees for the paper, sugarcane for the cap and shoulder. Plants pull carbon out of the air as they grow, and they can be replanted. They’re renewable! And it’s because of the plants that the carton creates up to 74% less carbon emissions than similarly sized plastic bottles. Help us make the world cleaner and healthier, one carton at a time.
Converting Plastics to Concrete Blocks
AEA Luxury Tours Owner, Don Rosenfeldt, worked with heads of communes in a remote area of Cambodia to develop a system to recover and repurpose unusable waste plastics. Firstly, building and funding a factory complex, waste plastic is shredded and introduced as a material inclusion to make concrete blocks. A very simple and easily usable solution for rural Cambodia. The blocks are very strong and have proved themselves the building in underdeveloped communities.
Charitable Works and Ongoing Support:
2023 Onwards – AEA Luxury Tours is currently funding the building of a school and teacher accommodation in a new development area outside Siem Reap. About 10,000 disadvantaged families are being relocated there and we aim to assist the young by providing teaching in English and Computer skills. The school is due to be completed by end June 2023. Once completed, AEA Luxury Tours is committed to providing ongoing support for the facility by providing funding to ensure
- a) all students receive a nourishing daily meal,
- b) the necessary equipment is provided for the school and
- c) funding for Staff Wages.
During Covid and initially on our own then subsequently with the Rotary Club of Phnom Penh, AEA Luxury Tours raised money to deliver food for over 120,000 meals to impoverished people in remote areas. These people had lost jobs and support due to closing of school, tourism and garment industries.
2016 – 2019. Fundraising and directly funding with joint donations exceeding US$100,000 to build an educational facility south of Phnom Penh resulting in the building of a 7-classroom facility, an accommodation building for staff and accommodation for visiting helpers.
Cancer Research – AEA Luxury Tours donates to the Australian Cancer Council
Enhancing Sanitation and Health: AEA’s Collaborative Efforts in Cambodia
This is a recent initiative that AEA has been involved in in Cambodia. Its common in rural areas for houses, most of which are extremely modest shacks, to have no toilet or bathroom. Any of us from the west can easily imagine the sanitary issues that arise from this. Some of the “lucky homes” have a cheap toilet but these fill quickly and still results in poor sanitation.
This leads to infections and disease, children not going to school and more over there’s no privacy for particularly women to conduct their business….consider the young girls reaching puberty and how that must feel for them.
AEA has joined an active group of Rotary Clubs from Australia and USA to address this in several communities. The goals here are to build engineer designed washroom and toilet facilities in EVERY house in each community targeted. The second community is nearing completion now with over 500 washroom/toilets installed. These are designed to last decades rather than months so the cost more the other cheap alternatives. Each costs about USD350 and AEA is proud to have donated about 40 of these in a remote community called Tapour located north east of Siem Reap.
I’ve visited the community 4 times now over the last year and seen the difference this is making, I’m not such a stranger any more and now they bake treats for me and invite me into their humble homes. Heres a few pics that tell the story: