By Hayley | Communications Manager
We can’t believe it’s been a year and a half since a bunch of new faces stepped in to the Epic Arts Centre in Kampot and joined the Inclusive Arts Course. All thanks to your donations and profits from our social enterprises.
This month the course has come to a close and the students have spent 3 weeks travelling around Cambodia touring local schools, leading creative workshops and performing.
They travelled from Kampot & Kep to Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and Battambang. A huge feat considering some of the students had never left Kampot! They also got a chance to visit the Angkor Wat Temple Complex, one student commented “Thank you for organizing the tour I never thought I would get to visit Angkor Wat in my life!”
The aim of the tour is to inspire children with and without disabilities and showing that young people with disabilities can achieve anything if they set their mind to it. The tour also gave the students a huge learning curve and a taste of what it’s like to be a professional artist. They performed at 8 schools and NGOs to over 950 children, young adults and teachers.
What’s Next?
We held a special graduation event this week as we saw our 8 students graduate from the Inclusive Arts Course. It’s an exciting time for the graduates and one that our Inclusive Education team have been supporting them through.
One Graduate will be employed as a full-time Performer in our Dance Company, Epic Encounters. Watch this space for a profile in our next newsletter!
Four more students have been interviewed and offered employment through Epic Arts in admin and social enterprise programme. And the remaining three students have been working closely with our team to explore what they want to do next and the Inclusive Education team have been helping them to take their next steps.
Whatever the graduates do next, whether at Epic Arts or elsewhere, they will do with more confidence and belief in themselves than they did when they walked through our doors 18 months ago.
Thank you for donating to our programme without the collective effort of you and other donors we wouldn’t be able to run our course and transform the lives of young people with disabilities in Cambodia! Over the last 2 years you’ve helped us to raise over $3,000 to support our students on their journeys.
Our Inclusive Education team are now taking a well-deserved break but we will be back over Khmer New Year reflecting on the course curriculum and structure ready for a new intake in October 2019!
A big thank you for supporting the work we do in Cambodia from all Epic Arts staff and students
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
