Free education for 300 children in rural Cambodia

We’re only just into the third month of 2017 and we already have so much news to share. Probably the most exciting news of all is that preparations for the new school build have begun and in just a few more months Helping Hands will have a brand new home!

And we're off!

After no less than 18 months of to-ing and fro-ing, of false hopes and crushing disappointment we finally received planning permission from the local authorities in December to build our new school. The land was officially purchased in January and signed over to Helping Hands and the community in February.

We held a traditional ceremony on the land that will soon become the new Helping Hands School with some of our staff, the chief and some of the village elders. Offerings were made, and everyone prayed for a smooth progression of the build and a prosperous future for the school.

Once the blessing ceremony was over, the heavy work began! The land had previously been used for growing rice - and had been the (temporary) home of some cows and water buffaloes – so was low lying and very uneven and consequently needed to be cleared of bushes and trees, raised up and leveled out to be ready to build on!
At the beginning of February, the first trucks came rolling in, containing tons of dirt to start the filling in.

As is normal in Cambodia, nothing is ever wasted so in between trucks working on the land, a group of older students scoured the land before it was cleared in order to collect any useable wood to build a fence around our new vegetable garden.

Just over 500 trucksloads were needed in total and we made a ‘before & after’ video of the land raising which you can watch here!

Amazing Community Spirit

Throughout the process, we’ve had fantastic support from the community, with villagers taking turns to keep an eye on progress and keep track of the amount of trucks piling earth onto the land. Special thanks go to S, one of our Cambodian teachers, to the village chief and his assistant, to L, one of our Scholarship students and to everyone else who helped. We’re so grateful to have so much enthusiasm from the community, it is truly incredible and a great sign of what an intrinsic part of the community Helping Hands is.

Our teacher, S told us,

“Now that the land raising is done, the whole village says that the land looks great! We can all see how much potential it has, and everyone is excited for the buildings to go up!”

And as we are writing this report, our new water well has been drilled, meaning we now have a regular supply of water for washing, purifying for drinking so the students and staff can stay hydrated all day, and for watering our vegetable garden!

How did we get here?

The new school has been a long time in the planning. In fact it goes back around two years when we realised that Helping Hands was literally bursting at the seams. With classes of up to 60 children at a time we were struggling to give the high quality of education that the children deserved, and as any teacher will know classes that size can also take their toll on the teachers.

Our original plan was to raise some of the land around the current Helping Hands site and simply build new classrooms there, but when we applied for planning consent the authorities gave us the shock of our lives when they announced that we would have to move as there was a new road being planned which would flood the land Helping Hands occupied. So the long search for suitable land and funding began back in 2015 so we are really happy to have got to where we are today before the work on the new road flooded us out!

Next we will be marking out the locations for the new classrooms, kitchen and toilets and we hope that by the end of March the first buildings can go up, so watch this space for more updates.

Could you help?

We are so thrilled that work has started on our new school, but there is no escaping the fact that a new, bigger school and additional staff means our monthly costs will rise this year. If you would like to help ensure that Helping Hands continues to give hope and a future to our young villagers, please consider making a donation or even setting up a monthly gift through GlobalGiving - as you can see from these photos it will make a huge difference to Helping Hands and donating through GlobalGiving is tax efficient for both US and UK tax payers!

Thank you to everyone for your continued support – we couldn't do it without you - and we look forward to bringing you photos of our new clasrooms with our next report!