Education Cambodia Project #20653

Free education for 300 children in rural Cambodia

by Globalteer

Free education for 300 children in rural Cambodia

Project Report | Jul 12, 2020
An update from Helping Hands

By Jess Robinson | Community Programme Manager

Our quiet, empty school yard

Dear friend,

We hope this finds you and your loved ones well.

As you may know from our last report back in March, schools across Cambodia are currently closed. News of re-opening changes almost daily, but currently it sadly seems that we may not be granted permission to re-open untl November. While we may not be able to continue in our normal pursuits, the health, well-being, and education of our students is now, more than ever, our key concern and responsibility.

Pushing Forward With An Adjusted School Programme

After a frustrating few weeks of feeling helpless and at a loss as to how best we could support our students and their families, we finally received some good news; the Village Chief and Commune Leader granted us permission to visit our students at home.

Now, our devoted team, armed with soap, toothpaste, workbooks and homework are out and about daily, making visits to each family. Beginning with thorough lessons on hand washing, they are then checking in to see how our students and their families are coping at this difficult time. Khmer, English and Sports classes are then taking priority, with lessons being held for individual families, or neighbouring households where appropriate.

Our students' dedication to learning is inspiring, they are all very happy to receive visits from our teachers and to continue studying. Many have expressed their wish to get back to school as soon as possible, and we hope to grant their wish soon! We’re all so grateful that despite these uncertain times, we’re able to maintain a strong support role in our local community and keep the vital connection between students and teachers alive. Receiving positive feedback from our students makes us all the more determined to provide the maximum support we can.

Utilising Our On-Site Garden

Many of our older students are currently making daily trips to the local forests to collect fruit for their families to eat and sell, but without the tourists passing through Siem Reap and the Temples, there is little opportunity for them to make much of an income. As is sadly the case around much of the world, many parents are losing jobs or having their income reduced, but with families already on such small salaries, and with no savings, this loss has detrimental effects on daily life and diet. Without daily breakfasts to make, our gardeners are instead focussing their efforts on increasing productivity in our on-site garden, producing as much fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs as possible. This produce is shared amongst staff and students to help alleviate some of the food shortages created by loss of income within families.

Current Goals

The disruption, uncertainty, and inability to run our normal programme is challenging and unsettling, but until we can return to some sort of normality our goals are simple:

1. ensure our students and staff are healthy

2. motivate our students to continue learning at home

3. keep our staff engaged, in work, and on salary to ensure the well-being of themselves and their families

However, without the usual flow of volunteers giving us a helping hand, support and donations are reduced, making our efforts even more challenging. The support of our Helping Hands family and wider community has never been more important. So today, we’re humbly asking you for your support. This coming Wednesday, 15^th July, GlobalGiving will match donations of $100 USD or more. The higher the amount of the donation, the higher the match. In the spirit of this matching campaign, we’re making big, bold asks of our supporters – and that’s you! Can we count on you to support our work with a one-time gift of $100 or more on July 15th? We know times are worrying and unsettling for you, but if you’re able to, please donate what you can. The match campaign starts at 9am ET on Wednesday (2pm in England, 8pm in Cambodia and 11pm in Sydney). If you’re unable to donate at this time, you can still show your support by sharing details of the match campaign and this link bit.ly/HH-GlobalGiving with your friends and family.

We hope to have positive news on the re-opening of schools for you soon, but until then we will continue to do our utmost to support our students and their families through these difficult times.

Thank you so much for all your previous support, please do consider making a donation this coming Wednesday if you’re able to, and please share our news and details of the match campaign with anyone who may be interested.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Love and best wishes

Jess, Sopheap, and all at Helping Hands

Thorough hand-washing to kick off each home-visit

Continuing to study hard at home

Enjoying warm up in home-school sports class

Improving stamina, balance and coordination!

Thun Pun working hard to increase productivity

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Mar 19, 2020
Community spirit will help us through.

By Jess Robinson | Community Programme Manager

Our newly formed Green Team

Dear all,

This is a very strange and scary time we find ourselves in, I hope you and your loved ones are well and managing to keep some element of normality. Now, more than ever community spirit is key. How we show this community spirit may have to change, but a simple phone call or message to check in, or simply asking if you can support in anyway can mean the world to someone and show you care. Lets try and keep this at the centre of our thoughts.

As I’m sure is the case for you, the situation is changing here on a daily, if not hourly basis, making everything very uncertain. At the beginning of the week, The Ministry of Education made the decision to close all schools, so for now, Helping Hands school is on a break. This doesn't mean we stop. Instead we have to think outside the box to show our care for the community, and we need to ensure we are fully prepared for when the situation begins to settle.

Many of our students will be forced to seek work to help them and their families through this difficult time, and once we’re able to re-open they will likely need our support more than ever. It’s imperative that we keep our garden healthy, to ensure we have plenty of fruit and vegetables growing to provide the much needed nutrients that our students will require on their return to school. On top of that, the health and well-being of our staff is of the utmost importance, and despite not being on their normal work schedule, we want to ensure they still receive their salary and are able to look after themselves and their families.

I’m sure this is a very disconcerting time for you, with so many questions and uncertainty. If you find yourself in a position where you can spare a few pennies to help us, we would be immensely grateful. GlobalGiving are running a 5 day long match campaign starting 9am ET, this coming Monday 23^rd March and during this time they will match any donation up to $50 by 50%! No matter how much you have to spare, your donations really can go far and have significant impacts on our staff and students. Please consider supporting us at this time if you can.

In other news, I have some happy and hopefully uplifting updates for you. Read on for all the details.

Our newly formed Green Team

Plastic, and the build up of general waste are big problems in rural Cambodia. There are no waste disposal or collection services that cover these areas and there is little education and awareness of the damages such issues can cause to the environment and personal health.

A group of students who are keen to learn more about, and take action against single use plastic and rubbish in our local environment, recently came together to form our Green Team. These inspirational students will lead the way in the fight against plastic and rubbish around our school and in the local community.

Their first task was supporting Director Sopheap in organising and running a clean-up in our village, and what a wonderful job they did! Following an eye-opening presentation on the detrimental effects of plastic and waste, our Green Team led the rest of our students through the village, sharing their knowledge with the locals and clearing up the rubbish as they went. Everyone made sure to separate items they could recycle, and despite the hard work and hot sun, everyone had a fulfilling (and fun) time making their village a cleaner space!

Going forward, the Green Team will support with monitoring and maintaining the school environment, support teaching of the younger students, and organise more clean-ups in the village and surrounding areas. We're so proud of the team for showing an interest and taking the initiative to improve their environment.

Child Safety Module Outreach

As you know from our last update, at the end of last year we launched our new Child Safety Module. This initiative is developing well, both within and outside school. Members of the local community have shown great interest in learning themselves, so our Social Worker, Kong, has been running workshops for parents and others in the local area to cover the topics that our students have been learning about. We’ve also had interest from other schools in the area who are keen to have us deliver workshops to them as well. We look forward to seeing how this can continue to grow once schools re-open.

Sports Programme continues to grow

Following our Sports Festival in December, the Globalteer Sports project has gone from strength to strength. The team is growing, and following training from Senior Sports Coach Lak, our new Sports Coaches are able to run the sports Programme at Helping Hands while Lak is focussing on rolling the programme out to other local schools. We’re thrilled to be given the opportunity to take the sports programme further afield, reaching more students and impacting more lives in the community. We look forward to updating you on more developments soon.

Please take care and look after yourselves and loved ones. Stay safe, but take care of your community where you can.

Love and best wishes

Jess, and all at Helping Hands.

Smiles as our students head out for the clean-up!

Happy to be making a difference in their community

Kong running a Child Safety workshop for Mum's

Un Sokhim, one of our new Sports Coaches

Please support our community if you can

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Dec 23, 2019
The latest news from Helping Hands

By Jess Robinson | Community Programme Manager

The sack race at our Sports Festival

Dear supporter,

As we near the end of the year it’s a great time to reflect on all that has happened over the last 12 months at Helping Hands. It’s been a wonderful and successful year, with significant developments in our curriculum, the installation of fans in the classroom and a new toilet block amongst other things. We’re incredibly grateful to you for the role you’ve payed in supporting us. Thank you very much.

The last couple of months have been particularly exciting with our new school year starting. As well as welcoming new students, we've distributed new uniforms and bicycles and held a fun Sports Festival for our students and their families.. Read on for all the details.

Uniform

November marks the start of the new school year in Cambodia, and for our students to be able to enrol at Government school, they are required to have the correct uniform. Sadly this is a cost our students' families simply cannot afford, so part of our commitment to our students is to provide the uniform necessary for them to be able to enrol and attend Government school. This year, with huge thanks to AmmanyA, we have yet again been able to provide this. Our students are therefore able to access the Government school education, as well as receive the additional support of Helping Hands.

Bicycles

The journey to and from school is a long one for some of our students, particularly those who are studying at junior high school. They rely on bicycles, often sharing rides with friends to make the journey, but thanks to the incredible Ponheary Ly Foudation and Eyes Open, we were able to provide 50 of our students with brand new bicycles last month! These new bicycles make that journey just a little bit easier! No more sharing rides with friends, and our students can be fully independent and safe in the knowledge that their new bicycles are in perfect condition and won't let them down!

Child Protection and Curriculum Developments

Earlier this month, the Globalteer and Helping Hands teams came together to launch our new Child Safety Module, which will be a part of the curriculum going forward. Child Protection has always been an important focus among our teachers, staff and volunteers, and we’re now implementing lessons for our students, which include online safety, home hazards, safe and unsafe touches, and stranger danger.

Through a variety of activities, we will bring awareness to some of the risks our students face, and ensure that close, open relationships are built between students and teachers, ensuring our students feel safe to talk to, and potentially report to, our teachers. The goal is that when a dangerous situation does arise, students will be able to identify it, and will have a support network to report it to and seek help from. Through this program they will be empowered to act on their rights.

Going forward we plan to grow this program to cover other topics such as electricity, exploitation and abduction, all of which are areas that children in Cambodia are at risk from.

Sports Festival

Last week, in partnership with the Globalteer Sports Project we held our first Sports Festival Day at Helping Hands. Students of all ages participated in events ranging from relay and sack races, to football and local Khmer games. Parents, local school Directors and the Village Chief all came along to enjoy the event. It was a huge success and so much fun for both participants and spectators!

As mentioned above, the last 12 months have been a huge sucess at Helping Hands. Thank you so much for your support this year, we hope you are able to continue giving us a helping hand in 2020. Happy holidays and we all wish you the very best for the year ahead.

Jess, and all at Helping Hands

Excitement at trying on their new uniform!

New uniform

Receiving their brand new bicycles.

Meeting to launch our new Child Protection Module

An impressive long jump at our Sports Festival

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