Schools Damaged in Cambodia delay Education for Thousands

Source: SOS Children's Village Canada

04/12/2011 - Damaged Schools delay the education of thousands of students across Cambodia; disruption could impact drop-out rates and meeting MDGs.

Cambodia’s worst flooding in decades has resulted in damaged infrastructure across the country, including schools. Such damage means that rebuilding may take months, delaying the start of school for thousands of students.

According to aid workers and government officials, as of late October, 323 schools out of 1,400 damaged ones were closed. Although some of these schools have reopened, there are reports that 77 of them need to be rebuilt entirely, and efforts are still underway to pump water out of some of the affected schools.

Child-friendly schools make a progressive leap in Cambodia

Thursday, August 26, 2010
By Jay LaMonica
UNICEF Cambodia

STUNG TRENG PROVINCE, Cambodia, 25 August 2010 – Long Kan Buthom, 11, performs a traditional Khmer dance with ease. Her radiant smile, expressive hand movements and precise choreography come from long hours of practice.

Buthom says that her dance teacher is very strict and doesn’t allow the girls to chat during the hand and foot bending exercises that are crucial to the ancient art form.

While Buthom enjoys dance, however, her real passion is drawing. She loves to draw cartoon characters and would like to be a painter or a lawyer when she grows up.

Child leadership

Buthom is a member of the Student Council at Reachea Nukol Primary School in Cambodia’s remote Stung Treng province, which lies in the northeast corner of the country along the border with Laos. While she is just 11 years old, she has an important job in the Student Council: to disseminate key information to the other students.

Every morning, the entire student body assembles outside the school to sing the national anthem and raise the flag – one opportunity for Buthom to perform her work. On one recent morning, she spoke to her fellow students about the need to put trash in new garbage bins all around the school. She also stressed the importance of hand washing after handling trash.

Reachea Nukol has changed dramatically in the six years Buthom has been a student there. Just a few years ago, it became a UNICEF-supported ‘child-friendly’ school.

Voice for students

The UNICEF Child-Friendly Schools Initiative aims to provide an equal opportunity for all children within a safe and nurturing environment. Teachers and caregivers are trained to recognize children’s emotional needs and to encourage them to express themselves without fear. As a result, students find teachers to be more understanding of their needs and interests and are able to approach learning in a positive way.

With a stronger voice, students at Reachea Nukol are also able to help make practical changes that improve their quality of life at school.

“There was no library before,” said Buthom. “We studied individually and there was no group discussion at all. There were not enough materials to use.” She added that the creation of the Student Council has led to better discipline and more leadership among students across the school.

Gender equality

Every morning Buthom rides her bicycle to Reachea Nukol, where her favorite subjects are social studies and science. After school she takes English classes from her father, who runs a small outdoor school tutoring local children. Her father has impressed upon Buthom the importance of education.

There was a time not too long ago when girls weren’t allowed to attend school in Cambodia. But today all children have an equal opportunity to receive an education.

Buthom says her role model is her grandfather, who was executed by the Khmer Rouge when her father was a little boy. Two of her uncles were also killed because they had attended university. In an attempt to destroy traditional culture, the regime even targeted classical dancers.

Today’s changes also go a long way toward helping Cambodia achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals targets relating to achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality. The MDGs, a set of internationally recognized targets for reducing poverty worldwide, call for the elimination of gender disparities at all levels of education by the year 2015.

Hope for the future

Since the days of the Khmer Rouge, however, life has improved across the country, and children – both girls and boys alike – can have hope for the future.

“There have been lots of changes in Cambodia,” said Buthom. “Now there are bridges, roads, schools and hospitals. Our government has rebuilt many things that were destroyed.”

Next year, Buthom will be moving up to secondary school. She plans to continue her studies and hopes to develop her passion for drawing. She and her friends will continue to study traditional dance, celebrating the traditional cultural art that is so unique to Cambodia.

Buthom also hopes to one day move to Phnom Penh or another big city to pursue a law degree.

Cambodians to march against rising hemlines on schoolgirls' skirts

Thu, 25 Mar 2010
DPA

Phnom Penh - Teachers and students from schools in the capital plan to march this weekend in an effort to persuade the government to ban creeping hemlines on schoolgirls' skirts, local media reported Thursday.

The Khmer Teachers' Association said the protest, which will involve around 300 teachers and students, would help to protect local culture from foreign influences.

"I want to improve and retain the Khmer culture that we had many years ago - some Khmer women have changed their manner by copying other cultures and wearing short skirts or sexy clothes in schools and public places," the body's director Sean Bunheang said.

He told the Phnom Penh Post newspaper that such influences could destroy Cambodian culture, and wants the Ministry of Education to ban schoolgirls from wearing skirts that sit above the knee.

He said the ministry ought to take measures against students who continue to dress contrary to custom.

"I see that some female students don't wear the Khmer student uniform," he added. "It seems like a Western uniform."

Ouch Sophorn, a 23-year-old male English literature student, said he noticed many female students wearing short skirts.

"We always turn back to see them," he admitted. "I like to see them wearing short skirts, but I wouldn't want my sister or my girlfriends to do that. I think it is not our tradition."

An official at the Ministry of Education said existing rules decreed that female students should wear skirts that hang below the knee, adding that he approved of the march since it would remind students to dress appropriately.

Cambodian school adopting Japanese method enjoys popularity

PHNOM PENH, Feb. 23
KYODO

A private school in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh adopting Japanese-style teaching in music, painting and other subjects is enjoying high popularity.

The school's principal, 60-year-old Yasuo Anzai, was an assistant principal at a junior high school in Saitama Prefecture before going to Cambodia, leaving his family behind in the city of Saitama eight years ago.

In Cambodia which has been struggling to overcome the legacy of the terror reigned Pol Pot era, he said, ''I'd like to help children who will create a new era.''

In December, ''Edelweiss,'' a song from the musical ''The Sound of Music,'' echoed in downtown Cambodia where barrack cabins and tenements are lined up. Several children played keyed harmonicas in front of the ''Bamboo and Wind School,'' about 4.5 kilometers southwest of the Royal Palace.

''In this country, music education materials for children are very limited. I'm teaching them painting and music to brush up their sensitivity,'' Anzai said.

Painting and music are rarely taught in elementary school in Cambodia.

His school offers morning, afternoon and night classes, and some 100 children aged 5 to 18 are attending. With six local teachers in their teens through 20s, the school is teaching how to read and write Khmer, the official Cambodian language, and mathematics, and instructing music and painting. They also teach some selected students Japanese and English.

To help them gain a better understanding of life and ethics, the school has also adopted Japanese-style teaching, such as radio gymnastics and evaluation meetings after lessons.

''It's enjoyable to be able to study things different from Cambodian schools,'' a 9-year-old boy said. ''The school has become a bit of a popular school (in Cambodia).''

The school collects $3 a month per child from their parents to pay for utilities. The amount is much smaller than tuition at other public schools and support from his former school colleagues in Japan covers the shortfall caused by educational material expenses and salaries for teachers.

Supporters also include Rotary clubs in Shibata, Niigata Prefecture, and Miyakonojo, Miyazaki Prefecture.

Anzai said, ''Education is indispensable for the development of a country. I'd like to work hard as if I were still young.''

He taught social studies at junior high schools in Saitama Prefecture and other locations for about 30 years and also assumed the post of deputy principal. Impressed by Cambodia children during his trip to the country in 1998, he came to Cambodia after his retirement.

In Cambodia, the memories of the Indochina War and massacres are still intact. ''The country is a small country tormented by wars and the big powers. It has kept my attention ever since the Vietnam War,'' he said.

''Although Cambodian industry is still lagging behind, graduates from our school will take on various professions in the future,'' he said, adding his school will start computer classes.

His goal: to build 300 schools

Thursday, May 24, 2007
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Honolulu Advertiser (Hawaii, USA)

Retired American journalist Bernard Krisher, who is devoting his retirement to raising money to build more than 300 small schools in rural Cambodia, will give two public talks in Hawai'i about his efforts.

He will speak at 6 p.m. May 31 at Temple Emanu-El, and at 10 a.m. June 2 at Central Union Church's Adult Education Committee. The public is welcome at both events.

Krisher, a former Asia bureau chief for Newsweek based in Tokyo, raises private funds that are matched or doubled by the World Bank or Asia Development Bank to build small wooden schools throughout the Cambodian countryside.

In 1993, he formed American Assistance for Cambodia and Japan Relief for Cambodia, both independent nonprofit organizations that accept private donations to fund schools.

Eight schools — four in operation and four under construction — have been made possible by Hawai'i donors, including Vanny and Jerry Clay who have become informal spokespeople for Krisher in Hawai'i.

"We just formed a 'donors club,' which meets once every three months," said Vanny Clay, in an e-mail message.

Clay, a teacher at Punahou, and her attorney husband, visited Cambodia in 2002 and saw the high level of illiteracy among children there. Clay, who is from Cambodia, heard about Krisher's work two years later, and the couple got involved. That year they visited him in Cambodia and saw five of his schools.

"We were totally amazed by the success of his program and convinced this is the way to help children," she said. "We donated funds to build a school in a very remote area in the northeastern part of the country. Our dream of providing basic education to impoverished children is now a reality."

The Clays visited the school they helped fund in 2005 and again last year to meet with students and teachers.

"We know that children are the future of the country," Clay said. "We wanted to help these children."

A school can be built for as little as $13,000 from a private donor, which is then matched by about $20,000 by one of the two international aid organizations. Schools built on land donated by a village include three to six classrooms, desks and chairs. Fully constructed schools are given to the village.

The Clays named the school they funded Mr. and Mrs. Sak Nhep School after Vanny Clay's parents.

In addition to teachers provided by the government, the Clays have hired an extra teacher to provide English and computer instruction to the children.

"We keep doing a little bit by a little bit," said Clay. "Some children walk one hour to get to school, so we want to try and buy some bicycles next year."

The school has four classrooms, 277 students ages 5 to 17, and teaches in two shifts, 7 to 11 a.m. and 1 to 5 p.m. Before starting a school day, children work in a garden, watering and caring for the vegetables that are harvested for hot meals at the school. "We want them to know about responsibility," Clay said.

To learn more about Krisher's project, visit www.cambodiaschools.com or call Jerry Clay at 535-8469.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.

FGCU students hope to change the world by funding a school in Cambodia

Sunday, April 1, 2007
By Elizabeth Wright
Naples Daily News (Naples, Florida, USA)

If Ana Herrera ever makes it to Cambodia, the first place she would visit would likely be a small, concrete school building that doesn’t exist.

Not yet.

The school would be in a rural village, and it would be the place several hundred children could come for classes each day. The building would be stocked with school supplies; maybe it would even have a garden next to it.

When this school is built, Herrera, 21, a Naples resident and a senior at Florida Gulf Coast University, will be proud to know she was one of the people who helped bring it about. So will the about 20 other seniors at the university who are working this spring to raise $13,000 to build the school.

Not one of the students has ever set foot in Cambodia, and few knew much about the country’s history before the semester began.

This project is simply their response to a class assignment their professor gave them back in January: change the world.

At first, that assignment seemed too big and too vague.

The students each had different interests outside the required-for-graduation service learning class, and they had very different ideas about what in the world needed to be changed, and how.

But they could agree children, and education, were important.

So when Herrera happened on a clip from a newscast about another group in the United States that built a school in Cambodia, she thought this might be something college students in Florida could take on in three months.

She also was inspired to do something to help provide schools after learning more about a country that is still recovering from devastation during the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s and subsequent invasion and civil war. One result of that political turmoil is that school facilities in rural areas of Cambodia are scarce.

Miranda Westphal, 31, one of the students in the FGCU class, said it might seem like an idealistic project, but it’s worth trying.

“I can’t even imagine not having a place to go to school,” she said.

The students are working with a charity called American Assistance for Cambodia. Over a little more than a decade, the charity has helped build 350 schools in rural parts of Cambodia and has an arrangement with the Asian Development Bank in which the bank matches donations.

So if these students raise $13,000 this spring, that means $26,000 will go toward building a village school. Construction can start once the students raise about $5,000.

Still, it is a large amount of money for a group of busy college seniors to come up with in a few short months before they go their separate ways.

That caused some to worry at first about whether they’d be able to pull it off.

“Everyone was like, ‘I don’t know. Isn’t that too much?’ “Herrera said.

But excitement for the project grew, and the students agreed to spend much of their spring break planning fundraisers — from bake sales to garage sales — and asking local businesses for support. Now, it’s more than just a class assignment to many.

And as for meeting their goal of $13,000, they have raised about $2,000 so far. But the students still have time on their side — there’s another month left before the semester ends.

“I’m hopeful,” Herrera said.

For more information on the Rural School Project or the need for schools in Cambodia, see http://cambodiaschools.com, or contact the students directly at changetheworldproject@hotmail.com. The students also plan an information session at 7 p.m. April 5, in Reed Hall on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University.