The Final Analysis
Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The morning I am to depart for the United States I receive a phone call, three more kids from the village want to go to high school. Unfortunately the boarding house run by Sam Sundoeun near Phnom Penh is full. Sovann tries to convince me that giving one student a scholarship will make everyone else jealous. So what am I supposed to do, let the Cambodian penchant for jealousy stop a bright kid from graduating high school?
I try another approach, giving the task of scholarship selection to the school supporting committee. We have scholarships for 2 girls to go to secondary school and 2 scholarships available for high school, for either gender. We establish a set of criteria based on financial need and academic achievement, an application process and a mechanism from securing the students commitment to come back and work in the village for 5 years once educated.
The school supporting committee must decide priority needs for the village and then select the best student to be educated to meet that need. This is a grand experiment to see if scholarship recipients will honor their commitment to help develop the village infrastructure. I will consider the program a success if the selected scholars are actually deserving students and not just someone’s relative. Trust, respect, honesty, solidarity, open communication—are they capable of building that foundation? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, one is going to high school and a 5th grade drop-out girl will complete primary and perhaps find the power to chose secondary school. The first, second and third grades are teaming to capacity with over 100 in each class. We need another building but that will require another 5 teachers plus we are trying to build a sustainable mechanism for the village to support those teachers. Once they do, we can build a new building.
On the sustainability front, there is good and bad progress. Market research indicates both positive and negative reactions by consumers. Briquette embers don’t last as long as charcoal, that’s a negative; however, they also don’t stain your hands black and that is a positive. We hear a consistent complaint of too much smoke, but our own tests reveal this is user error. Briquettes must be lit with a big flame; too small a flame and it will smoke. Lighting it correctly requires a change in behavior, no matter how many times we tell them people try to start it will a small flame like charcoal. Education is needed to inform both how to use it and why you should. We have some ideas to use radio advertisements and make a traveling road show with our truck to perform in front of the vendors shops, showing photos of the forest destruction and using theatrical storytelling to explain how to use the briquettes properly. However, the greatest force for change is price.
Dig this. The opposition Sam Rainsy Party is on Radio Free Asia everyday talking about corruption and the destruction of the forest. People are listening and starting to respond, I see a lot more Sam Rainsy Party signs throughout my travels. So during the recent election cycle the police cracked down on the illegal transport of wood, resulting in higher bribes paid by charcoal transporters to enter the city. Thus the price of charcoal tripled which made our briquettes easier to sell. Now that the election is over with the ruling Cambodia Peoples Party, run by ex-Khmer Rouge Hun Sen, securely in power for another 5 years, the “crack down” is over. Charcoal and wood vendors enter the city daily paying lower bribes and selling charcoal at the same price as briquettes. How would you like to do business in that kind of a political mess?
The reality for our villagers working hard to introduce an alternative is that it is impossible to progress under a government that won’t enforce it’s own laws. The incredibly dense, hardwood trees of Cambodia are some of the most important carbon fixing species on the planet. Using them for firewood is as wasteful a use of a natural resource I have ever seen. It is something everyone on the planet should be concerned about—if they only knew.
In the meantime, our briquette production manager, Bun Vanna, soldiers forth attempting to take over full management of the briquette business with oversight by the school supporting committee. Our job is to help them succeed in finding customers and a full marketing plan is in the works. However environmental sustainability in this political climate may prove impossible. One option is to move the briquette program to a school in a treeless Takeo and Svay Rieng Provinces, where the forest destruction is already complete and people cook with cow dung. Accessing these local markets would reduce the transportation costs enough to make a profit to support their local school.
For the village of Chrauk Tiek, we are working on a partnership with Heifer International to develop the land behind the school into a sustainable agriculture demonstration site, integrated with chicken production with hopes of making a school lunch available to our malnourished students.
The King Pin in our program moving forward is developing Sovann’s capability as a community organizer. The situation is precarious and I am not sure of our ability to fundraise now that the US economy has tanked. It’s good to know that greed doesn’t pay…but I can tell you from experience that doing good doesn’t either.
Now that Sovann’s dream of going to America is about to come true, he’s seems scared. “I never been abroad” he keeps saying after repeatedly asking if he can come with me now. He’s nervous about flying, 45-years-old and he’s never been on an airplane. Can you buy food on the plane? Where do you sit, in the front, the middle, or back? He doesn’t want to bring any checked luggage, won’t bring back a big Buddha for me, and won’t carry a letter for someone else because he’s afraid he can’t find the post office. It seems he wants to focus on only one thing, getting himself on and off the three planes through 10 time zones. I’ve detailed every transfer procedure for him, and he’s asked me 10 times if I will be there to pick him up in Denver.
I’ll be there with bells on my friend…
Stay tuned…we’ll be blogging Sovann’s Adventure in America!
To our donors and supporters thank you for taking this journey with us.
I am grateful for your support, your emails and love.
Kari, from the Seoul Airport, out.
