School 135 poor Cambodian children to prosperity.

Two siblings, the older brother is Sambath, 7 years old and the younger sister, Sreynang, 5 years old,  who are studying at the primary school were locked in the small rental room by their parents, Sreyneang, 44 years old, is their mom who is a food seller in the street and Mr. Sophat, 37 years old, is father a Security Guard who have been relocating into #22 Village, Sras Chak Sangkat, Kan Duon Penh, Phnom Penh City since 2020 from Kampong Cham Province, staying in the rental room cost 60.00 USD per month. Because of poverty, they can’t send their children to a private school for additional education like others. In their free time from public school, while the parents had to get out for selling food and work, the two children were mostly hanging out with street children that why they were locked in the rental room to avoid them walking away far from home with street boys. Otherwise, their children might use drugs or commit any illegal activities lured by their friends and/or any harm to them unavoidably. Certainly, it was a wrong decision, but they had no choice and they could not feel concentrate on selling and job. The mother of two children normally needs to take time to check home often for monitoring the children whether they were at home or studying in a locked room whenever the seller is not too busy or make a call to her neighbors to see instead if the seller was busy.

“The CBE-School is a place helping to deal with the burden of poor families like mine so that I can move forward in enhancing my family’s livelihood”, Mrs. Sreyneang said. The seen difficulty of her family, the neighbors advised her to register the children to access education at CBE School, and then, she talked to the village chief to assist her to request to the CBE school manager. Having known the story of the 2 children, it was drawn the attention of the school manager and led her to visit directly at their home so she decided to forward the request to the SCC management team to allow them to gain additional education. Since they have attended the school, they stop going out with a stranger boy and focus on their education. They are socializing and friendly with other children even end of the class they are still at the school complex to read books and play with other classmates and like to talk with foreign volunteers. As the result, they got a high score and upgraded to the next level for the next year.

Living with hope and meaningful life. The mother said that I was very happy when my children stayed at home and read books or played with their schoolmates only, stop hanging out with the boys like before, and they have a better read and write Khmer and English. Moreover, they had changed their attitude by respecting and greeting elders, and parents and more focus on their homework. She added that I had extended the period of my selling to two more hours per day since her children had been accessing the CBE school. So, my income had been increased than before and I do hope that I will have a good family with educated children. 

SCC-CBE school tries hard to ensure children are given all the support and encouragement they need to step back into state schools and have a better future after the Covid-19 outbreak in Cambodia. Schools in Cambodia were closed for 250 days between 2020 and 2021. The biggest risk of all is that if children don’t return to school soon, they may never return. The children receiving our support were concerned that the longer remain out of school, the less likely they were to go back. They may feel that they have fallen too far behind to ever catch up, or their families may have become too reliant on the extra income children provide through working for improving their living. Through efforts in any way of keeping provide refresher courses/extra learning classes during and after the Covid-19 pandemic as well as providing food support for the children’s families, 77 out of 94 children are seen to pursue their education with the public schools in reopening schools during the low covid-19 infection rate.

Under continuation support of SCC, these 77 orphans and vulnerable children were re-enrolled in the state schools after reopening schools as soon as the announcement of the Ministry of Education. This is a great achievement that SCC-CBE Community School has implemented its activities with the best efforts to prevent these children from dropping out of school during and after the covid-19 outbreak in Cambodia. First, direct and indirect learning and teaching. Direct and indirect learning and teaching mean that the teachers of CBE School went directly to the community to teach the children in their own homes, helped to organize the daily study schedule, and study hours, and set them homework to practice in collaboration with their parents and caregivers (Group 1). Group the children, who live near the school, requiring them to come directly to the school to take homework and practice at their respective homes, then submit it to the teachers and received a further explanation from their teachers (Group 2). Group the children who can learn via online learning and teaching (Zoom learning). This way is only for children with smartphones (Group 3). Second, CBE teachers went to teach children and their families about health related to reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection. They have to adhere to the principles set by the Ministry of Health of Cambodia for COVID-19 transmission. These alternative approaches and activities of the school were remedial teaching and learning during public school closure to keep our vulnerable children from returning to school without a negative impact on our children’s education.  

In addition, Food was in the highest demand for survival, especially during the outbreak of COVID-19 when all business activities were required to be closed. Most vulnerable children’s families have badly been facing this issue because those vulnerable children's families work as baggers, selling food on the street, construction workers, laundry service providers, cleaners, moto-taxi drivers, and other low-paid workers which they normally were able to save the small amount of money so that they could not supply their families' food for a longer time. SCC contributed to addressing this by mobilizing resources from other supporters to provide nutrition support to 56 most in-needed families each family received 1 bag of 40 kg rice, 6 bottles of soy sauce, 4 soap, 1 box of face masks, 1 bottle of alcohol, and 1 spray bottle. Separately, 77 vulnerable students were provided school material such as 1 uniform, 1 pair of shoes, 1 bag, 2 written books, 1 white boat, 1 marker, 1 set of pens, a pencil, an eraser, a correction pen, and 12 colored pencils. The handover events were conducted for 2-times following the instruction of the Ministry of Health to avoid COVID-19 at CBE-School in the Bangkok Slum area. The events were participated in and congratulated by local authorities. In short, the food provided was a vital contribution to the vulnerable children returning to school since their parents have not become too reliant on the extra income children provide through working.

However, in the amount of 17 vulnerable children dropped out of CBE School and the public school because of their families’ severe reasons. First, their family moved out to their parent’s homeland to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Second, because of poor living conditions, their family members were forced to migrate to work in Thailand. Thirst, the family did not have enough money the living so they need to sell labor for a living. Fourth, the family member fell ill and the parents decided to stop their education to earn income to take of their family. Fifth, Parents/caregivers changed residents and migrated locally for other work with their children.