Free education for 300 children in rural Cambodia

Education for the whole community is at the heart of our strategy at Helping Hands as it brings the most sustainable and long term benefits, whether it be training in agriculture and nutrition, lessons in personal hygiene, or sponsoring students through university. In this report we look at three recent and exciting educational highlights. 

Helping our staff to be the best!

We can't give the students at Helping Hands the best education without making sure our staff are as well trained as possible. As you probably know we are sponsoring our project co-ordinator Nang through a Masters in Education and recently more of our staff have been enjoyig on the job training. Our gardener, Rhi, has been learning more about organic farming and permaculture and two of our Kindergarten teachers have been shadowing teachers at a highly regarded state school in a nearby district.

Gardener Rhi learnt so much in just one week of volunteering with a local NGO that we can already see the results in the garden: nutritious, fresh morning glory, long beans and pumpkins are already shooting up from the ground, which are all essential parts of our breakfast programme.

Teachers Kong and SaoVanna have been assisting and observing in kindergarten classes at a state primary school where they had the opportunity to learn from their peers, share ideas, resources and teaching methods.

The feedback was hugely positive with one of our teachers telling us:

"This school is great. It has so many resources and I’ve learnt so much from the teachers at this school. Whenever I have more questions, I have their number and I go to meet them to learn more. My dream is that one day Helping Hands will grow into becoming as great as this school". 

We are sure that with their enthusiasm and dedication they are absolultely right about that!

Kindergarten Prize Giving

We believe that it is important to reward good work - after all, children would rather be playing all day long, and recently it was the turn of kindergarten students to show us their best. Rewarding hard work boosts students’ confidence and will give them motivation to keep doing their best.

So, after the Khmer New Year Holiday, when students and teachers had time to settle back into their routine again, kindergarten classes started their end-of-term exams. It was a busy week for the students and they all tried their hardest. So after the exam results were announced, there were prizes for the top three performing students in each class. You can see three of our proud students in the photo below...

Creative Writing with a Purpose

We are always keen to look at new and interesting ways to engage our students in order to help them learn and develop. So recently 20 of our secondary students aged 14-17 took part in a creative writing workshop on the theme of change.

The students are all going through the transitional stage from childhood to adulthood, in which they face many changes and challenges in their lives. As they  develop into young adults, they can sometimes feel overwhelmed by feelings and thoughts that arise during this period of change. Through the writing workshop, facilitated by ‘Writing Through’, the students found a way to express their thoughts and feelings on this important topic, whilst also practicing their written and spoken English. Here is an excerpt from one of the poems the group produced:

Change for the future.
Time goes forward.
We lose friends.
We get older …
Time makes these happen …
Time and change sometimes makes us unhappy.
But sometimes happy.

The students found the workshop very stimulating and we hope you agree that they produced some wonderful work.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this update from Helping Hands. We'd like to thank you again for your support and hope that you are as happy as we are with the progress that your support is making possible.

With gratitude,

Everyone at Helping Hands