Inner Strength:Threat-Free Future for Cambodia

Preah Phut Village, Cam Rieng District, Battambang Province, includes a community where landmines are buried. This community (hereafter referred to as "Small Preah Phut Village") was a separate administrative district until 2014 when it was included in Preah Phut Village. About 30 households are living in Xiao Preah Put village.

These households are the poor who do not own land and have moved without permission to the foot of a small mountain owned by the government and still contains landmines. It can be said that the village is both a place where the poor are originally concentrated and a remote part of the village.

Terra Renaissance surveyed this community in 2015 and learned that children were not receiving an education due to the distance from the elementary school in the village. In addition, most of the people living here did not have jobs in the village and made a living by migrating to Thailand or doing day labor in the landowner's fields within Cambodia.

When parents go to work for long periods, younger children are forced to follow their parents because there is no one in the village to take care of them, leading to a loss of educational opportunities. Furthermore, we have also observed cases where children older than junior high school age work as breadwinners. It can be said that (1) the issue of educational opportunities and (2) the issue of low-income sources in the village are mutually interconnected.

In response to this situation, Terra Renaissance built a kindergarten in Koprea Put village in 2015 and is currently dispatching teachers who can teach kindergarten through 2nd-grade elementary school students.

In addition, we began supporting goat breeding in 2017 to provide a source of income within the village. The number of households breeding goats and using them as a source of income has been steadily increasing. During the new coronavirus outbreak in 2020, we were inundated with requests to rent goats from households that were unable to go to Thailand to work due to the border blockade.

This month I would like to tell you about the Small Preah Phut Village Kindergarten and about a new trial we are trying this month.

At the kindergarten in Preah Phut Village, as mentioned earlier, children from kindergarten to the first and second grades of elementary school learn to read and write. However, since the teachers specialize in kindergarten, they can teach first and second-grade classes, which are mainly reading and writing, but they are unable to teach classes beyond the third grade, where social studies, science, and other subjects begin.

Therefore, children in grades 3 and above must leave the village to attend the local elementary school, which is 4.3 km away, making it difficult for the children to walk there.

For some children, it is difficult to get a ride home every day because they do not have a motorcycle, their parents are busy with work, or their parents are out of work far away. Because of this, elementary school students in Preah Put village often drop out of school after the third grade.

We estimate that there are currently 30 to 40 children in the community who are of school age but are not able to go to school, or who have dropped out after the third grade and are still of school age.

Furthermore, while we can pay the salaries of the kindergarten teachers through donations from our supporters, ideally, for the future of the community, the local government should maintain the employment of the teachers.

To this end, this month we have approached the district administration about the following
(1) That the local administration pay the salaries of kindergarten teachers.
(2) To send one elementary school teacher who can also teach studies beyond the third grade.

As a result, the administration officials were difficult to deal with, claiming that they would need to have 40-50 students to dispatch one teacher. However, since this month was the first negotiation, we have the impression that the number of children of school-going age who are not in school or have dropped out was not accurately communicated and that they do not understand the practical reasons why it is difficult for children in this community to attend the elementary school in their village.

We believe that there is room for negotiation in the future by communicating more specifically the number of children who are not able to go to school and by repeatedly communicating the challenges they face.

We consider it an important step that we were able to first inform the administrators of the issues happening in the district, and we plan to continue to patiently communicate the current situation and continue to negotiate with them.

One saving grace in this situation is that the kindergarten teachers are very enthusiastic and good at teaching. They buy the necessary equipment for their classes at their own expense and go to distant places to participate in workshops for teachers. They teach the children how to read, write, and calculate, as well as how to greet each other and sing songs for moral education.

Above all, it is thanks to all of you who understand and support our activities that children can now learn to read and write. Thank you very much. These negotiations will take time, but we will continue to work towards a better situation little by little.