Be the Change Network

“How will they get from 6th grade to 10th?  There is a big hole in that desperately poor secondary school 4 kilometers down the road.   It only has 120 students enrolled, 12 teachers assigned but only 5 show up, and they have to live in a monastery to survive.”

As I step back and look at the progress we’ve made, the important change I see is in the kids themselves.   They are confident. Both the scholarship students in the city and the primary students in Chrauk Tiek display a level of joy and confidence I have never seen before. They used to be nervous, avoid eye-contact and physically shy away from me.  Now they look me in the eye, talk to me, touch me, they want to know. It’s almost like the vibration of their life force is higher. There is a lightness of being about them. It is belief in the future of their lives.

The children will not allow their parents to keep them away from school. One girl cried for half a day when her parents took her to a wedding celebration and broke their promise to have her back to school in time for class. I visited a first grade girl who broke her leg after being hit by a moto during our sanitation day.  She cried from the cot where she lay recuperating with her leg in a make-shift splint,  not because she was in pain but because she had missed a week of school.

This in a country where 50% drop out by fourth grade!

Our fifth and sixth graders show up on a day off from school to make crosses.   One of our donors commissioned them to make 150 little wooden crosses for an Easter fundraiser.  They will be paid $2 for each. With no tools and working in teams of 4, they each whittle away at a wood stick they brought from home. Once it resembles a cross they work to make it smooth by rubbing vigorously against the cement floor. The work is overseen by the three students who won the design competition we held for a $5 reward.   When the work is complete, and I pay them $300 for the 150 crosses bought by our donor, they decide not to pay themselves $2 individually for each cross made, they’d rather keep the money pooled together and buy something for their school. They want to purchase a pushcart so they won’t have to carry water anymore.   The cart will feature painted letters “donated by the 5th and 6th grade class 2010.”  I am certain this is the first time this has ever happened in the entire country of Cambodia.

Most kids don’t make it to 5th grade.  Ours never miss.

I have a new dilemma. I am concerned about our 49 wonderful, dedicated, smart sixth graders - where will they go next year?  We don’t have enough room for all of them in the scholarship program in the city, it’s really for high school anyway. How will they get from 6th grade to 10th? There is a big hole in that desperately poor secondary school 4 kilometers down the road. It only has 120 students enrolled, 12 teachers assigned but only 5 show up, and they have to live in a monastery to survive.

Then something completely amazing happens. The Chrauk Tiek Primary School Supporting Committee decides to share it’s meager resources with the Banteay Branak Secondary School Supporting Committee.    We don’t have the budget to expand full throttle to the secondary school so they will share the primary school budget until we do.  One thousand dollars per month is budgeted to the primary school program, five hundred of that for teacher support. The remaining five hundred is allotted for supplies and sustainability projects.  They’ve decided to use this five hundred to help the secondary school committee get started until we can provide their own program budget.

The first thing they will need is barbed wire. The Bonteay Branak committee will prove their commitment to partnering with SSI by building a fence around the school yard on their own.   The community will contribute the wood poles and labor.  It may not sound important to education to us but it is important to them.   It is something they know how to do, an  achievable goal proved necessary by the cow that enters the school room during our meeting.

This new school committee is energized by our discussion. We draw out their vision on a big piece of flip chart paper.  I am surprised to learn that they dream of having a high school here.  It’s clear that the biggest problem is attendance of the teachers. So we discuss priorities and once again it shifts from cement fences, playgrounds and buildings to happy, well-supported teachers.  They understand what it takes to support a teacher: housing, a bathroom, food and salary.  We decipher the difference between one-time expenses and ongoing expenses - food and salary, that’s the hard part. This is the focus of our sustainability program, and they get it.   It will take 5 years to achieve this goal. Once again, I am certain this committee of illiterate women is smarter than the government. Like moms everywhere, they want their kids to go to a good school.  What most aid groups don’t seem to realize is that when you have a strong school, the kids will come.  There are several programs out there actually paying families to send girls to secondary school. This idea is not only unnecessary, it actually undermines community solidarity.   When you have a strong school built by a community that participates, families see value in education and the kids come!

The challenge now will be to raise the $45,000 we need to expand our program to the secondary school before the school committee loses it’s momentum. Eleven members of this committee have already attended a two day Attitude Forum  to jump start the personal transformation needed to begin their leadership training.

Can we raise the money to keep pace with their belief in us?

Thanks to Jill Hunter of Lander, Wyoming, the school now has playground equipment for the students.  In this weekly letter to Kari, Paul Chuk, who teaches English at the school and works with the School Sustaining Committee, wrote about Jill, Jenna and Justine’s visit to the school.  Jill recruited ten sponsors during the first annual campaign.  She hosted a fundraiser with Amanda Prom for the school on January 24th at the restaurant she operates in Lander.

Jill, Jenna and Justine are great guests and easy to please. They are amazing people who have shown great interest in our school.  Jill was here in 2005.  What a difference since she’s was here a few years ago she said.  She also said that there are many changes from inside the school ground to inside classrooms to the way students reacted.  They were thrilled to see our students speak some English.  They were impressed to hear our students sing ABCs, Old Mac Donald, and If You’re Happy songs.

The children love all the playground equipment.  They especially love to ride on the merry go round.  Beside the playground equipment, our special guests bought us a set of badminton, a soccer ball, two small balls, and a volley ball. They also gave us $40 to buy the uniforms for our me’sn basket ball team since they are number one in the district and need to move on to compete in the province level.  We are grateful to all of them for helping us.

By Sok Khemara, Voice Of America Khmer
Washington, 20 January 2010

Poor families in poor health, the loss of land and the legacy of war are all contributing to a child labor problem in Cambodia, the country’s national International Labor Organization coordinator said Monday.

“The latest studies we have show that in many countries, if there exists child labor, that country is in heavy poverty,” said the coordinator, Chhorvirith Theng, as a guest on “Hello VOA.” “In a country where educational development exists, that country has no child labor. So on both these tendencies, the government of Cambodia is paying attention. For instance, we take education as a core sector.”

The government and private sector are working to jointly eliminate child labor in Cambodia by 2015, Chhorvirith Theng said, through plans to educate people at the grassroots level, as well as vocational and skills training and microfinance.

A national survey in 2001 found 1.5 million children aged 5 to 17 who were economically active in Cambodia. Around 250,000 were working in risky occupations.

Child labor is not only a problem in Cambodia, but around the world, Chhorvirith Theng said. The ILO estimates as many as 250 million children involved in labor, with the majority involved in dangerous jobs that can be damaging physically, mentally and spiritually.

The Cambodian government is scrambling to balance its budget. The latest news is to cut 50% of all the salary for every serviceman and woman. Teachers’ salary across the nation is affected as well. For our school, they want us to eliminate 2 classrooms by combining the 1stgrade to two classes and the 2nd grade to one class. Here are all the details: Before the budget cut, SSI had: · 3 classrooms for the first grade with 46 to 47 students per class · 2 classrooms for the second grade with 45 to 46 students per class · 1 classroom for the third grade with 61 students · 1 classroom for the fourth grade with 44 students · 1 classroom for the fifth grade with 40 students · 1 classroom for the sixth grade with 48 students After the budget cut, SSI now has: · 2 classrooms for the first grade with 70 students per class · 1 classroom for the second grade with 91 students · The rest, which is from the third to sixth grade, remains unchanged So far, we ended up eliminating 2 classes to meet the requirement that the government suggested. By doing this, SSI teachers get paid less. As a result, the government saves money, we lose money. They told Bun during the meeting, that they no longer care about the quality of education that the children have. All they care about is saving money. I was shocked, angry, and frustrated to hear the insulting comments they made. Can you imagine if you were a teacher attempting to manage a classroom that size? There are up to 90 students in each classroom!  This is unbelievable! By Education Officer Paul Chuk