Free education for 300 children in rural Cambodia

The last few months have been busy months at Helping Hands and there is a lot to tell you. We hope you enjoy reading all about what we and the students at Helping Hands have been up to - after all, it’s because of you that we can do all the things that we do!

Scholarship success for Helping Hands Students

We’re currently also in the middle of the process of selecting this young adults from the village who are eligible for a Helping Hands scholarship. With support from sponsors these students will have the opportunity to learn for a degree or vocational qualification, with which they’ll be able to find a good job to support themselves and their families, and have a brighter future. We are delighted, therefore to report on the success of just two of our current scholarship students!

K, who was studying at a vocational training school in Siem Reap, graduated from his one year course to become a chef. One of his teachers said: “K. is a very dedicated student and one of the most eager to learn.”

K will now start a 3 month internship this month at one of the top hotels in Siem Reap. We’re very excited for him, and sure he will do amazingly well there.

And at university, another student is soon to graduate with a bachelors’ degree in Finance and Accounting. He presented his research paper presentation last week, and did a marvelous job. Next year he will be the first Helping Hands student to take up a  Master’s degree with a scholarship from Helping Hands.

If you are interested in sponsoring a scholarship student you can read more about the scholarship programme here.

And success for our staff too!

Helping Hands wouldn’t be the same without all our amazing staff. That’s why we’d like to share that we are immensely proud of our two English Teachers Nang and Sopheap, who last month successfully completed a training course with Limited Resources Teacher Training (LRTT).

This training brought teacher trainers from all over the world to work with teachers from NGO’s in Siem Reap. The trainers did classroom observations, which were followed by training days.

Our teacher Sopheap said : “Last year’s training was good, but this year the training was even better! We felt like our trainers were so involved with us and they adjusted their feedback and training to the individual teachers. Everyone could learn at their own level”.

Nang and Sopheap’s trainers said of them: “We were already blown away by the way that Nang and Sopheap teach their students at Helping Hands, but on the training days on top of learning more things themselves, they helped the less experienced teachers to learn as well. They are truly amazing.”

Another teacher who we are proud of is Teacher Yoeuy, who in the past months graduated from being a volunteer in the library to a volunteer teacher! He takes every opportunity he can get to learn more and grow into his new role.  

Another reason to celebrate!

It seems like only yesterday that the whole village came together to build our school, with even the smallest villagers walking around with tiles for the classroom floor. But actually we will be celebrating Helping Hands’ 10^th anniversary next month! Ten years of empowering people rural Cambodia to help themselves. Ten years of laughing, crying, doing, learning, helping, teaching, achieving and inspiring.

Keep your eyes on this space, our blog, Facebook and Instagram as we look back on these ten brilliant years, with a smile and a tear, and you’ll find out how you can play your part help us to continue ‘giving a hand-up’ in the next 10 years!  

Busy times at Helping Hands!

In the past months it has been very busy at Helping Hands, particularly in the month of July, when we hosted a group of 11 volunteers from Durham University in the UK. They came through our parent organization Globalteer and it was the first time we had such a big group of volunteers at Helping Hands!

The Helping Hands site may be small, but these volunteers managed to keep the students busy both inside and outside the classroom with great workshops in science, geography, creative writing, English conversation, dance and sports, and they also found some time to help out making some educational resources for the English lessons.

One of the volunteers about Helping Hands: “The project is responsible and meaningful. It is very obvious that the kids benefit hugely from attending Helping Hands in addition to their government school”

We’d like to say a big thank you to the Durham University group. If you would like to know more about volunteering at Helping hands, please go to: http://volunteercambodia.org.uk/volunteer/

We hope you have enjoyed reading out latest update and we look forward to bringing you more exciting news with our next report. In the meantime keep an eye out for news of our 10^th anniversay celebrations.

Thank you from all of us at Helping Hands.