Arts for Cambodian Children & Teens at Champey

Great news from Champey Academy of Arts

Mark was in Cambodia in April and here is an update on some important developmets. 

Our heartfelt thanks for the  wonderful  support  of our donors. This year, at Champey Academy of Arts the generous support of our donors  has allowed us to continue to offer arts  programs to our students , expand our “ community stewardship”  support for  several students and to make some urgently needed improvements to the school.  Watch for more on “Community Stewardship” in future updates.

Table(s)  please!   Thank you !  

 A most wonderful  gift  came from one of Mark’s former banking colleagues who is  generous supporter. This gift  has allowed Champey  to purchase full size tables and chairs for the  drawing/painting classroom.

The photos below show how previously, since the very start of Champey Academy,  the students sat on the floor and did their work on very low tables. Although it is  visually charming to see the students hard at work  while seated on the floor, it is not the most comfortable way to work and  it can be difficult for students who may have some physical limitations. This is a wonderful improvement for our students and we are thrilled to be able to modernize and upgrade the classroom.

A new roof over our heads!

The same generous donor who sponsored the purchase of tables and chairs for our art classroom also gave a gift which allowed us to replace the sagging, leaking roof over the dance stage.  This gift enabled Champey to  install a corrugated sheet metal roof to replace the  rapidly degrading plastic tarps held in place with steel wire cables and  which had served as a roof over the stage since our school opened in 2013.

The new roof should eliminate the persistent problem of leaks and sudden  floods from  rainwater that collected in the tarps and   which  frequently occurred  during every rainy season.  The photo below  which shows the rain pouring down the wall , flooding just one side of  the stage area, does not really illustrate the problems that heavy rain caused, but it can give you a general idea.  What you don't see are tarps bulging under the weight of water which often  collected overnight and which then  had to be emptied the next morning by students and staff  pushing the tarps up with poles to cause the water to flood out. 

In addition to replacing the roof, our  construction team, made up of a group of CAA students and CAA staff, also  worked with  an outside  contractor’s team  to repair  many broken areas of the stage floor.  We are now well prepared for the coming rainy season and  we will  no longer have to fear that the dance stage roof might collapse under the weight of rain trapped in the folds of the tarp during   the rainy season’s  frequent heavy downpours.  

What your support does

Because of your support, Champey Academy (CAA) continues to provide accessible (free) instruction in Cambodian traditional art, music and dance to disadvantaged children and youth.  CAA gives these kids a safe space to learn, socialize and mentally escape from what are frequently very hard lives of extreme poverty. It also gives these students an opportunity to create dreams for “ some day” and to see how other students continue to work their way forward.

None of this would be possible without the wonderful  support of our generous donors.  Please accept our  heartfelt thanks  on behalf of our staff and students at CAA,

Barbara & Mark Rosasco

Links:

• Kasumisou Foundation - Champey Academy
• Trip Advisor - check out 73 visitor reviews of Champey Academy
• Telegraph (UK) article on Cambodia mentions Champey Academy

Global Giving update for February 25, 2019

Mark is currently in Phnom Penh visiting our programs and this is Mark’s report.

On Saturday, February 23, our head dance teacher, assisted by a couple of her students, prepared a lunch of chicken curry, baguette bread and rice noodles for about fifty students and some of the staff of Champey Academy.

That afternoon the school’s director and I made home visits to meet the families of six of our current students. One was the family of a student, a little 10 year old girl whose family which consists of  her mother and two siblings and who live in a scrapwood shack that is suspended over a drainage pond in a neighborhood of central Phnom Penh. Alas, even this humble shack may be quite temporary as it is in a neighborhood which is increasingly being taken over by brand new high rise apartment buildings, but for now... this is their  home.

This family of four ( three kids and mom) lives in a single room which, incredibly, measures barely eight feet square . There is no private bathroom and no kitchen. The children’s father is in prison, serving a 2 to 3 year term for drug use and their mother struggles every day to support the family by selling birdseed - actually just cracked corn - in front of the Royal Palace.

During our visit to their home, the girl’s mother told us that the child (age 10) had been so excited about the curry lunch which she would be enjoying with her Champey classmates the next day, that she had been unable to sleep at all on the previous night.

The immense value of a safe space 

Although daily classes at Champey finish at 5:00PM, when I left the school at around 6:30PM on  Saturday, there were  many students remaining in the art classroom who were still working on their drawings and paintings and the dance stage was still filled with young students playing and laughing and enjoying the company of their classmates.

 Let’s put these simple snapshots in context….

Consider, for a moment, the story which the mother told me that afternoon of her daughter’s excitement about the next day’s ‘curry party’. Think, for a moment, about the many students lingering at Champey long, long after classes had finished for the day. Both stories give voice to an important truth that Champey Academy of Arts, in addition to the many benefits of arts education which we offer our students, offers a safe space for many of our kids. Although their home lives are truly,  utterly bleak, Champey also offers a safe gathering place where our students can, for just a little bit, remain after class in a clean, safe place to enjoy being among their friends and delay for a while  , returning to the reality of crushing poverty and impoverished homes.

Our heartfelt thanks ! 

We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to the Elementary School Student Council at the Tokyo American School for their generous gift which will sponsor six curry lunches this year for the Champey students and staff.

Please keep in mind, when you see photos of  our beautifully costumed dancers at the Raffles Hotel, or a display of  the artwork of our talented students, it is easy to forget the challenging circumstances that many of our students experience each day. Their artistic accomplishments would be remarkable in a typical middle class community in the US or Europe. Consider, however, that these accomplishments are achieved by students who face remarkable adversity and great challenges.  However,  their personal standards of achievement are so high that we can easily forget the amazing accomplishments that our students achieve despite extreme adversity

Because of you, our donors...

None of this could be possible without the support of you, our wonderful donors. Please accept our heartfelt thanks and appreciation on behalf of our students and teachers for your wonderful support. We hope that you will continue with us on this exciting journey and continue your  support our wonderful students and staff.

Barbara & Mark Rosasco

Links:

• Kasumisou Foundation website