A unique project! Update from the primary school project

Visiting our primary school project in April filled us with positive energy and further motivation to continue our work in Cambodia. It was such a joy to meet the happy children, teachers, headmaster and the commune leader. The community is very grateful for our support and come across as being highly motivated and committed to follow up and contribute in our joint effort. 

Save the Children Cambodia have also recently visited the school, and the conclusion from their evaluation is that this is a unique project! They are impressed with how well the teachers, school director and local community are integrated in the project, and not least, the level of local ownership. 

We are proud to be able to share some highlights from the report by Save the Children:
Norway House has supported the school over the last 2 years, with Childs Right Foundation (CRF) as implementation partner.  Budget and technical support have been provided to a number of projects, in close collaboration with the local community.

There are currently 580 children enrolled in the school, from kindergarten to grade 6. The school consists of 3 buildings with 15 classrooms. The environment is warm and friendly and the children look happy to be attending school. The teachers seem pleased with their work environment. A new teacher has recently been hired; a good sign, as attracting teachers in rural Cambodia can be a problem. 

Completed Projects:

• Repair and decoration of a new library, which is now well up and running and equipped with suitable books for all ages. The library is manned by two teachers and is regularly used by the children during school hours as well as before and after school. Children from the afternoon groups arrive early to watch other classes, or to play in the library while waiting for their class to start. 
• Repair and decoration of two kindergarten classrooms; rooms which were in deterioration last time. 
• A new playground has been created; with different kind of playing tools such as swing, slide, and a merry-go-round. 
• All classes are provided with suitable teaching aids, and equipped with first aid boxes.
• A water tank has been built, and filter and pump has been fixed to the to the water well. 
• 10 female and male toilets have been built on the side of each building; in each toilet there are brush, soap and small tank with water. Water network has been linked to the toilets.
• 2 sets of 10 outdoor hand washes have been built to ensure easy access to proper hygiene. 
• In each class there is a water filter with water and clean glass by the side. 
• A canteen with external vendors has been created. The vendors pay a monthly fee to the school, which is used to cover maintenance cost of school building and electricity cost. 
• 86 bicycles have been provided to students whose families hold the ID poor cards.  
• Health check-ups are carried out 2 times per year for teachers and students.  
• Eye glasses have been provided to teachers who need it.

A number of educational projects have also been identified and implemented to increase capacity of the children, teachers, headmaster, parents and other community stakeholders. 

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Mr. Tes Sokchan, School Master, highlights how school structure has been strengthened. 
CRF invited expert teachers from the MoEYS to train and improve the school system based on child friendly policies. A number of council groups have been established, supporting the identified areas of the school development:

1. Technical council group, their role to develop the teaching aid and teaching methodology.
   
2. Technical council by the topic, their role to discuss and document the teaching methodology and support on teaching method by topic.
   
3. Council group for the rule in school, their role to facilitate and coordinate to solve problem that may happen among students in classes.
   
4. Committee supporting school, their role is to participate to develop the school‘s plan and conducting fund raising to support school.
   
5. Teacher council, their role to dealt with teachers who face difficulty in their teaching issues.
   
6. Education committee, their role to prepare and conduct training of sport and art, include prepare sport and art friendly competition with other school.
   
7. Parent supporting school committee, their role to encourage parents to follow up and support access for education..
   
8. Education council group, their role to deal with feedback/complaint from communities and from the students about the attitude and behaviors of the teachers.
   
9. Environment committee, their role to create good environment among the groups and encourage those groups to implement their role. 
   
10. Competition committee, their role to follow up and motivate the teachers performance. 
    
11. Managing financing committee, their role to manage financing with transparency. 

Some of the partners and stakeholders share their experiences with their involvement and achievements of the education projects implementation:

Mr. Mey Savath, Chef of Education Department of Kandal province. Savath said “We participated to create the children councils in school, as well as to create the child club in communities. MoEYS approved to provide two teachers to work in school’s library. In the library, one of the teachers works in the morning and one of them works in the afternoon. Therefore our library keeps open in the whole day. “

Mr. Chhim Morn, Commune Leader. Morn tells how his community got involved in early stage to establish the school plan. As part of this the communities agreed to share 5 USD per month for water and electricity cost. Additionally community contributed 100USD to build the garden of school. The communities also participated in creating the child clubs, whose role is to follow up and educate communities about the children’s education situation.

Ms. Long Mary, Commune Council member, is actively involved in supporting the out of school youths as well as in improving the economic situation of the people in commune. She says “we collaborated with school and MoEYS to provide small business training to trainee whose age from 16-40 years old. Our commune leader is the chef of these small business projects. We use the rooms in this school to conduct small income generation training of hair dressing, makeup and cloth preparing for the wedding”. 

Mr. Soun Rathana, teacher, responded to the question of what would make the school and community committed to achieve their development goal?  “With the support from CRF we learn about the need of children. We follow the set up structures to manage project activities among partners. In school there is the children council; Children councils are playing their role to strengthen the school system and other activities such as, school maintenance, hygiene, doing peer education in encourage their friends to visit the library and giving feedback to teaching activities of the teachers. “

Thanks to the support of CRF and the local community, it seems we are well underway towards our goal of improving the quality of education, by promoting a safe, healthy and children friendly learning environment. 

We are deeply grateful for your support that allows us to continue this work! We firmly believe in giving a 'Handshake not Handout' - empowering people to solve their own problems, rather than doing it for them or subsidizing them financially. 

Save the Children evaluation #NorwayHouseCambodia PrimarySchoolProject: A unique project! http://t.co/vLCdiR9EeK pic.twitter.com/AQkqd47E1m

— Ingvill Solbø (@IngvillSol) June 15, 2015