Be the Change Network

By Kari Grady Grossman

CHRAUK TIEK VILLAGE, CAMBODIA-It’s hard to find words to describe the positive changes at the school this year.   I feel like we have reached a critical mass of understanding with the villagers, and they are coming out in droves to support the school.

It is impressive.  It is unbelievable.

The government is noticing us as the best school in Aural District and possibly all of Kampong Speu Province.  This is largely due to the presence of our education officer Paul Chuk, but he won’t stop there.  He wants this to be the model school for all of Cambodia.   This may not be as much of a stretch as it sounds.  We definitely have the highest community participation in the country and that is the key to sustainability.

I was amazed at the number of people who showed up for the “welcome ceremony.” This time we didn’t have any long-winded government officials droning on and on while children sweat in the hot sun - thank god.   No, this was an intimate affair with just the two village chiefs, 12 members of the school supporting committee, and over 300 villagers sitting under the shade of two old army parachutes.  The school director pointed out the long list of accomplishments of the past year, and I did my best to thank everyone for their participation, especially Paul Chuk who has been the key to success in our Leadership program.

I felt choked up when I thanked the three women who show up at 4 am every morning to cook the school breakfast over hot fires stirring vast caldrons of rice, mung bean and a soup of papaya and mackerel. The world food program contributes the fish and rice, but the community contributes the papaya.  Each week a different class is responsible for bringing one papaya each to school.

The kids love the breakfast and it has increased attendance to capacity, hardly any students are absent ever, even during the harvest season.  The teachers say they concentrate better and seem to be brighter.   The World Food Program is difficult to pull off.  It requires a community that participates, is honest and organized.  Only 3 schools in the district have it and the world food program inspectors can show up at anytime, if any food is missing they will loose the program.

I pointed out that last year the school supporting committee had set 2 goals.  The number one problem to fix was the children hungry at school - mission accomplished!! CLAP CLAP.  The second goal was for every child to get a high education, and we have 6 scholarship students studying secondary, high school and college in Phnom Penh.  This proves we can make progress when we set a goal and work together to achieve it. But I can’t do it without you, I said.

Then the most amazing thing happened.

The people started talking about how important it is to help Kari!  One by one they took the microphone and pledged their support, whether it was helping with the school breakfast, or contributing an oxcart of wood sticks for the cooking fires, or cleaning up the yard, or contributing food to the teachers - they really understood that this is about creating a better future for themselves.  And they believe that we are committed to helping them for as long as is necessary.

A man called Kong, whose son is our only scholarship student attending college, asked a great question.  What can we do for the ones who already drop out of school?  They had dreams and ideas about what life skills are needed that the school could help teach:  sewing, mechanics, beautician, a power tiller for agriculture and a pond for every house were a few suggestions.

Tomorrow we meet with the school committee to determine which of these is their priority.  I suspect we will have full attendance.

“They saw the vastness of the world for the first time.  The students got a new view, and with it, their dreams grew bigger.”

By Kari Grady Grossman

NIGHT ON THE TOWN- When I picked up the scholarship students at the boarding house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh,  I was met with big bright smiles.  These 6 bright faces, who one year ago had been shy and completely destitute, were now brave enough to practice their English on me.

One of our brightest kids, Sokea, said, “Before I have scholarship I was destitute, but now after I take attitude forum class, I have hope.”  His smile widened.  He wants to study agriculture and rural development.

Saram, the Souy girl, who is our youngest scholarship student, is attending 8th grade at the secondary school. Last year she couldn’t even say “hello” and she had never been beyond her village.  Now she trys to speak English a little and is studying to become a Khmer teacher.   She is destined to become the first Souy minority girl to ever go to high school.

And Sarim, the Souy boy on scholarship, wants to be a math teacher.

So Phally, an 11th grader, wants to be a medical doctor in the village.  Her brother So Theary, also grade 11, wants to be an engineer.

And Sem Kong, our only college student, is the oldest and the leader of the pack.  He wants to be an English and Computer teacher.

One year ago they had no idea what they wanted to be.

Now they can dream.

We loaded them all up in a tuk tuk and met with the principle at the high school to make sure they were on track to graduate with the necessary courses to pursue their dreams.  I could not be more proud of them.

With all 8 of us piled in a tuk tuk we went out for a night on the town.  We stopped for dinner at my favorite clay pot place, where the food is served raw in big piles of meat and vegetables.  You cook it yourself in the soup pot at the middle of the table. The kids thoroughly enjoyed gorging themselves on “big food.”  They liked the soup better than pizza.

Then we took them to the Sorya shopping center, which is a newly built vertical mall.   Riding escalators was like an amusement park thrill ride.   At the top of the 10-story building,  we stepped outside the top-floor restaurant to the oberservation deck overlooking the city.  The kids were in awe.   The stared wide eyed.  They gaped at the tiny cars and people.  They saw the vastness of the world for the first time.  The students got a new view, and with it, their dreams grew bigger.

Wait till you hear what we are going to do next with our scholarship program!

I am leaving for Chrauk Tiek village today and will write as often as our internet connection allows.  Great things are happening there, too!   We are being noticed by the government as the #1 school within the province. There is high demand to attend what is normally considered a poor, dysfunctional rural school, yet the education one can receive at the Grady Grossman School is better than what is available in Phnom Pehn. And the best part is…it was all done by the local people.

By Kari Grady Grossman

When you’re the director of a humanitarian organization in Cambodia just about everyone you meet asks you for a job. There aren’t many good jobs in this town, but when I tell them our positions require living in the rural village and working with marginalized and desperately poor people (even by Cambodian standards) our prospect loses its appeal. We only have one staff in Phnom Penh, everyone else works in the village.

But every once in a while I meet someone who gets it.

Pen Vibol appears to be such a person. A middle-aged man in his early fifties, he’s looking for a new job. He hands me his name card - Seminary Institute of Religion, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, coordinator. He’s not a Mormon, he just organizes their scholarship program here in the city. Everyone focuses their education efforts in the city hence the city grows, the real education problem is in the rural villages where nothing ever changes. You’re right, he says.

They don’t need to build more schools until they figure out how to run the ones they have. Vibol agrees.

I recently read a UNESO report entitled ” Reaching the Marginalized” a review of education efforts in developing countries around the globe. It’s a pretty complicated analysis of what works and doesn’t work in helping marginalized people gain access to education. In my experience there is one way to “reach the marginalized,” simply reach out to them. That means live with them, talk with them, and know them. It’s not that complicated, it just takes a willingness to be in community with them. It’s hard to do from an air-conditioned office in Phnom Penh or a Land cruiser. It takes very special people to love the poor the way our education officer Paul Chuk does. We are working on a training system to teach new education officers and build our capacity to expand into the secondary school. The job is not for everyone. It takes a person with the right personality.

Pen Vibol has a typical Cambodian story. During high school in the 1970’s, when the Khmer Rouge regime took over, his parents were killed, and he was arrested and he was arrested for speaking French. When the militants shoved a book in his hand, he faked illiteracy by turning the book upside down and acting stupid. They blind-folded and shot him anyway but the bullet missed his head. Afterward, while living in an orphanage, the communists sent him to Russia to study locomotive engineering. He spent the 80’s in Leningrad and speaks Russian fluently. Can you imagine a half starved Cambodian kid living in Leningrad for 11 years? Sent back to Cambodia in 1993 to work on a unfunded train system, he found himself jobless most of the 90’s and got by as a motto driver. Nowadays, he tows the line of the Latter-Day Saints. He’s got the universal Cambodian survival skill - whatever it takes.

Vibol told me that in Russia teachers who choose to go teach in rural areas of the cold north are paid more; those who choose to live in the warm south are paid less. Teachers can decide what is more important to them, lifestyle or money. If Cambodia really wants to change the education access of the rural poor, the answer is quite simple: Pay the Teachers More! I wonder if UNESCO took the money they paid PHD’s to offer their analysis and simply paid a group of teachers more, would they find their answer “reaching the marginalized?” Maybe they don’t really want to reach the marginalized, maybe it’s more interesting to study the problem than fix it.

A middle-aged man who speaks, Khmer, French, Russian and English, who understands the importance of paying teachers to do a difficult job and the personal sacrifice of teaching the marginalized. Vibol may just be the perfect person to train with Paul and learn how to be an education officer at the secondary school we want to expand into. Who is going to help me pay him what he deserves? UNESCO?