September has been a massive month for Tiny Toones, both inside and outside of Cambodia. We have been involved in a plethora of events from film festivals to dance classes and we were glad the month ended with the Pchum Ben holiday so we could all get a well deserved break!

In Long Beach, California, the first annual Cambodia Town Film Festival took place during September. The 3 day celebration of Cambodian culture and talent kicked off on the 14th of September and Tiny Toones was featured, with a screening of the song and music video ‘Anakut’.

Over on the other side of the USA, Tiny Toones dance teacher Fresh flew to Philadelphia to attend the annual Beyond Sports awards ceremony. The Beyond Sport awards exist to celebrate organizations providing empowerment and social change through sport and Tiny Toones was nominated and shortlisted for the second year in a row. Unfortunately we didn’t come first, but we would like to congratulate the winners Skateistan, who are doing amazing work with children in Cambodia and Afghanistan.

Back in Cambodia, and we have been working very hard to try and raise money for our September Dance School Challenge. We set a fundraising goal of $4000 and have been campaigning to try and meet it so we can continue our work here at the Tiny Toones center. We held a party at Showbox (photos on the website now), have been running dance classes every Saturday and have been collecting donations through our global giving page. For more information on the Saturday dance classes and to keep up to date with all the Tiny Toones news, please like our Facebook page.

Things are never dull here at Tiny Toones, but September promises to be one of the biggest months we have had all year!

The focus of the month is the Dance School Challenge, our annual fundraising drive in which we encourage people to donate or raise money by hosting an event or completing a challenge. We have our own party planned at Showbox on September 21st so come on down and party in style while making a difference!

September is also bringing Tiny Toones international recognition through the Cambodia Town Film Festival. The Cambodia Town Film Festival is the first annual Khmer film event held in Cambodia Town in Long Beach, California. It was created to showcase Khmer talent and culture and the Tiny Toones music video for Anakut (found here) has been officially selected to be screened during the 3 day festival!

The Beyond Sport awards are an annual celebration of organizations who use sport to create positive social change, and another great opportunity for Tiny Toones. We are one of only 3 organizations in the world shortlisted for the UNICEF Sport for Education award, which is an enormous honour. Dance teacher Fresh will be flying to Philadelphia to attend the ceremony and hopefully bringing home the gold! (Check out Fresh’s story here).

On top of all of this, September will mark the beginning of Tiny Toones offering private breakdancing lessons! Held at Krama Yoga studio (#52 St. 302), the lessons will run from 1 – 2pm every Saturday through September at a cost of $6 per person (no more than 10 people to a class). The age limit is 15+, the lessons are aimed at people with little or no breakdance experience and they promise to be awesome fun so get there early to make sure you don’t miss out!

For the second year running, Tiny Toones is one of only three projects from across the globe to be shortlisted for the UNICEF Sport for Education Award at the Beyond Sport Awards. BeyondSport is a global organisation that promotes, develops and supports the use of sport to create positive social change across the world.

Almost 400 projects applied to the Beyond Sport Awards and we are honoured to have been selected as one of the strongest projects once more. Last year’s summit in London drew the likes of Muhammed Ali, David Beckham and Tony Blair (as well as our own KK). The award ceremony this year will take place in Philadelphia in September – keep your fingers crossed for us.