Arts for Cambodian Children & Teens at Champey

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Champey Academy of Arts GlobalGiving update for March 2023

The income from the many visitors to Phnom Penh - who pay a small fee for an English language presentation about Cambodian traditional arts and a tour of our school - has always been a critical source of revenue for Champey Academy.  However, for two tourism seasons (November to April of both 2020/2021 and 2021/2022), due to Cambodia’s Covid restrictions on incoming visitors, we struggled with almost no income at all from tourists.  Happily, though, we were pleased to welcome back to Champey Academy many tour groups in this 2022/2023 tourism season.  Our school is well known and loved by the travel companies, freelance guides and even many tuk-tuk drivers who know that they can count on a stop at Champey Academy to be one of the highlights of their guests’ time in Phnom Penh.    Without the help of Kasumisou Foundation’s generous donors, it would have been impossible for us to make up the funding gap created by the nearly complete shutdown of the tourism industry in Cambodia during the first two years of the pandemic.  We are very grateful that, with the return to normality in 2022/2023, our school is busy nearly every day welcoming groups of tourists from many foreign countries. 

Of course, another negative impact of the pandemic was that many students stopped attending classes at Champey for fear that the close quarters on the dance stage, in the music classroom or in the drawing/painting classroom might cause them to become infected with the virus.  Fortunately, though, throughout the many months of the pandemic we had no truly serious cases of Covid among our students and staff. 

Now, the only remaining impact of the pandemic has been among the junior ranks of the dance classes.  Before the pandemic, our dance space was typically overrun on most days with dozens of happy youngsters receiving their first lessons in traditional dance.  However, while the return of the tourists to Champey this year has provided critical support for us financially, it has thinned the ranks of our junior dance students whose parents are still not comfortable for their young children to be in such close proximity to large groups of foreigners whom they fear might be bringing Covid into our school.  Now that Covid infection rates have fallen and continue to fall all over the world, we are hopeful that the parents of our youngest students will soon again feel comfortable to let their kids return to the dance class at Champey Academy.

 We sincerely appreciate your long time and generous support of our program. OUr program goes far beyond just  learning dance and music by teaching team work, leadership, tolerance and a general sense of care for one's fellow human.

Warmest regards,

Barbara & Mark