| NCLO In the News
Someone to love them Woman creates international charity dedicated to Cambodian orphans
Sunday, April 04, 2004
By Sally York
Tyrone Twp. Elizabeth Mallory seemed to have a perfect life: beautiful daughter, adoring husband, two grown stepsons she was proud of, lucrative career, sprawling home on 10 country acres. But something was missing. Late one night while her family slept, a restless Mallory surfed casually from Web site to Web site until she came across some photographs of orphaned children. She sat in the dark, staring at their sad faces. "The thought of those children, through no fault of their own, having no one to love them really hit home," she said. "We all have so much love to give. We really do." Mallory didn't yet realize it, but she had just found what was missing from her life. Now, two years later, everything's changed. Cambodian orphans Bryn, 3, and Arrien, 2, have joined the family. And Mallory, 37, quit her management consulting job to establish No Child Left Out, an international charity that provides 10,000 pounds of rice each month, education and other support to Cambodian orphans. NCLO and its new financial partner, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sharon Center, Ohio, are establishing an orphanage in Cambodia. "We felt it was important for somebody to step up and be the lead partner in this," said Faith Minister Paula Funfgeld. "We trust this organization and want to help them make a difference in the lives of these children." Mallory and other NCLO volunteers are researching ways to help disadvantaged children in Haiti, Mongolia and South Africa. To accomplish their goals, the Mallorys, whom Flint Journal readers may recall as the couple who gave away two horses through an essay contest in December, have had to make sacrifices. John Mallory, 57, came out of retirement to take two teaching jobs to pay the bills. They no longer drive new cars or go on vacations. "But I'm a lot happier," Elizabeth Mallory said. "When you get pulled so strongly in one direction in life, there's no option, you have to follow that. "It would be more convenient, family-wise and time-wise, to put it aside, but I can't. It's impossible." The journey begins "When I started out, I didn't even know where Cambodia was," Elizabeth Mallory said. "In South America, maybe?" But she couldn't deny the inner voice, or the instincts directing her actions more and more. She pictured two Cambodian children, a boy and a girl, sitting at the kitchen table with daughter Whitley, 6. Mallory soon found out where Cambodia was: in Southeast Asia. She and her husband met with families who had adopted Cambodian children. They got a good feeling from the kids, who were sweet and affectionate. More Internet exploring put her in touch with other people who were trying to adopt in Cambodia but were stymied by a U.S. ban in December 2001, stemming from allegations of adoption fraud and baby-selling. The ban continues, though exceptions are being made in certain cases. Mallory was advised to explore adopting in another country, but in May 2002, days after marching in Washington, D.C., to protest the ban, she flew to Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. She was nervous about navigating a strange country by herself, aided only by an English-speaking taxi driver, but steeled herself with the intuition that her children were there, somewhere. During her two-week stay, Mallory discovered a friendly population living in impoverished circumstances, doubly worse in the 13 orphanages she toured. "Hygiene was basically nonexistent," she said. "The children washed their own clothes in plain water, no soap. To get medical attention, they had to be in dire need." The facilities were filthy, she said. Kids slept on wooden slats. There were no dressers for clothing, and no clothing except for what the children were wearing. "They ate rice, rice, rice, three times a day," she said. "Sometimes greens were mixed in. One in five of the kids in the orphanages won't make it past age 5." Cambodian families pay teachers directly for instruction. The orphans can't pay, so their education is minimal at best, Mallory said. The ratio of orphans to caretakers was 15-to-1, she found. Essentially unsupervised, the children ran in packs. Girls barely in their teens routinely turned to prostitution. Many of the children were there either because their parents had died from AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria or land mine injuries or because their families were so poverty-stricken they couldn't care for them. Strangely, most of the children Mallory met struck her as happy. "The children have so little, but they have something we don't have: a simple life," she said. "Though poverty-stricken, they can still smile. They don't take anything for granted. There's something about seeing that in person." The highlight of the trip came in a Phnom Penh orphanage, where she met an 8-month-old boy named Arrien. Their eyes locked. They both turned away, then looked at each other again. Arrien's expression seemed to say, "Have I seen you before?" Mallory didn't doubt it. "I knew this boy was my son," she said. Now she had to convince her husband, who had agreed to adopt a girl. No Child Left Out Back home, Mallory was a changed person. She couldn't shake her anger at Americans who take their relatively high standard of living for granted. She would holler at Whitley to finish the food on her plate. Her vehemence surprised her. She found it difficult to think about anything but Cambodia, Arrien and the other children she'd seen. She kept telling John, "You have a son in Cambodia," until he softened on the idea. She decided to go back. On her second trip, in September 2002, she visited Arrien and met the little girl who would become her daughter. Bryn lived in a rat-infested Phnom Penh orphanage and ran with a gang of older kids. Her eyes were encrusted and swollen shut by an infection. "I carried her all around the orphanage. She melted into my arms," Mallory said. "She wanted to love and needed to be loved so badly." Home again, Mallory pursued independent adoptions of both children, despite the ban. She also hunted for a small, personal U.S. organization she could go through to send money and gifts to Arrien and Bryn and their orphanages. She couldn't find one, so after long discussions with her husband, she formed her own. She drew on her organizational skills as a management consultant, her connection to a large network of families waiting for their Cambodian adoptions to be approved and her passion. The name of the charity came from the words she'd chanted in Washington: "No child left out! No child left out!" Mallory, who said she puts in eight hours a day, seven days a week, and 12 core volunteers including a small team in Cambodia have provided 25 orphanages with 121,000 pounds of rice, 650 pounds of produce and protein, 40 bicycles, 100 school uniforms, 400 sets of school supplies, 2,100 pounds of clothing, toys, medicine and supplies, English lessons, 500 dental kits and dental exams. Funds come from donations, fund-raisers and NCLO's sponsorship program. Each sponsor is paired with a Cambodian orphan. Photos and letters are exchanged. Gifts can be hand-delivered whenever an NCLO representative travels to Cambodia. "It's a totally unique program because you're not required to give a set amount. All of the money is pooled together and divided evenly among the children," said sponsor Anita Gillispie, 28, of Tulsa, Okla., adoptive mother of a daughter from Cambodia and son from Vietnam. She's one of Mallory's core volunteers. "It's great for families like mine who are financially limited but want to do something." Ninety-five percent of money received is spent directly on the children, Mallory said. Her long-term plan to build an orphanage in Cambodia got a boost recently when St. Paul Lutheran in Ohio heard about NCLO and pledged $10,000, enough to pay rent on a building for a year. Mallory will scout for a facility when she makes her sixth trip to Cambodia in July. Mallory said the NCLO Center will be markedly different from the Cambodian orphanages she's visited. Instead of 200-plus children, the center will house 25, with a child-caretaker ratio of 7 to 1. "The idea is to make it a home-away-from-home for the kids," she said. Center staffers, with help from the children, will also repair dilapidated houses in surrounding villages and assist other orphanages. The gang's all here Slicing through the bureaucratic red tape, the Mallorys were able to bring Arrien home in April 2003, when he was 19 months old. Bryn came home in October. She was 3. Mallory describes her son as a "little gentleman who opens doors for you and tries to help with the groceries. He's a tenderheart." Slightly older when she was adopted, it took Bryn longer to adjust. Having run with a gang back in Cambodia, she at first refused to obey the Mallorys. Startlingly independent for a 3-year-old, Bryn dressed and bathed herself. She'd take extra food at the dinner table to hoard. She knew only her native language, Khmer. Now she speaks fluent English and is better at following rules, Mallory said. "She's like a regular 3 1/2-year-old," she said. Whitley is a "mini-mom" to her new brother and sister, who have brought her out of her shell, Mallory said. John stays busy working two jobs and Elizabeth, in addition to taking care of the kids and running NCLO, has started doing some management consulting work in the evenings to help make ends meet. John Mallory said he didn't mind going back to work. "She'd given me the opportunity to retire for a few years and raise our daughter, so this was trading off," said Mallory, who teaches at Atherton Middle School and Baker College. "Besides, it was just amazing to watch someone be so concerned and so giving to somebody else just because they see a need, not because they think they're going to get something from it." Thinking of all of the NCLO work that lies ahead is a bit overwhelming at times, and the Mallorys worry about money. But Elizabeth Mallory knows she's on the right path. All the proof she needs is right in front of her whenever Arrien, Bryn and Whitley are at the kitchen table, seated in the same places where Mallory envisioned them two years ago. "It really was meant to be," she said. *** Sally York covers the Fenton area. She can be reached at (810) 766-6322 or syork@flintjournal.com
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