We’re Number ONE !
By Paul Chuk
Our principal, So Bun, returned from the district meeting and reported that the Educational Department in Oral District, Kampong Speu province had chosen our Chrauk Tiek Elementary School as the number one school in the district.
As he told me the good news, his face had a great big smile. The speaker at the district meeting announced that he is going to save the best school for last when he started the slide show. Then he showed all the schools one by one and the last was our school! They showed many pictures: the kitchen for the breakfast, the stockroom, the fish pound, the chicken coup, the morning glory garden, the flowers all around the school yard, the bathroom, the library and books inside, and the well decorated classrooms.
We are please and proud to be recognized for our success by the Education Department. Big thanks to Kari Grossman who has been passionately working for almost a decade to make a difference in poor Cambodian children’s lives. Without SSI support, Chrauk Tiek will never be the number one school in Oral District.
We hope to assist and improve two more schools in the area: Bonteay Pranak Secondary School and Sre Chrap Elementary. I feel confident that as long as we have the fund in place to bring our program to those schools, we can revive them. It will take some time and a lot of hard work but we have found the solution.
Through our program, we can bring the community to work together side by side 
with the principal and with the teachers in order to build their schools in a sustainable way to become successful. This means we help them to learn how to help themselves.
We hope to guide them to recognize a few important keys to success: participation, communication, honesty, trust and solidarity. My wish is that eventually our program will lead the way to building the best schools throughout Cambodia.
