Angkor Tree Project

The flooded street leading up to the school

I'll start this blogpost with some facts about Cambodia I've found online.
Did you know that 22,8% of Cambodians live on less than 1.2 USD per day?
Did you know that 1,500,000 children between 5 and 14 years old (45%) are working to support their family?
Did you know that about 40% of primary schools and 35% of hospitals don't have any safe drinking water facilities?
Did you know that teacher salaries are often very low?

My first morning in Siem Reap I woke up to the sound of children's voices spelling English words: "What is this?  Pot.  How do we spell it? P-O-T.  What is this?  Spoon. How do we spell it? S-P-O-O-N."  At home this would make me grumpy for the rest of the day, but because I'm staying at my friend's place, who lives right above the school, I didn't let it ruin my mood and got dressed and went down to see the activities going on in the school.

The school gates open at 07.30 and the first kids enter at that time, they are served breakfast (which they mostly don't get at home) and at 08.00 classes start until 10.00, in the afternoon a second group comes and get the same courses.  Children are divided by their level of knowledge and once registered at the school they are obliged to follow classes regularly.

Friday is always a special day, because the second hour at school is movie time.  The children get to see an English movie or cartoon with English subtitles and they also get a sweet snack during the movie.  At this school they only get (free) English courses.  After their courses here they go to a normal state school for all other classes (as well as the low-quality English courses they get at the state school).  In Cambodia children only go to school for a half day everyday except on Sundays, so the project is a very useful way for them to fill up the other half of the day.  Otherwise they would be working to support their families or just be spending time outside on the street.

The importance of English knowledge in a country as Cambodia is not to be underestimated.  Most of the children coming to this school will probably have a good job later, thanks to their good knowledge of English.  They are the future of this country, it will be them building on the future economy to pull Cambodia out of its poverty.  Knowing English will help them in establishing international contacts and attracting investors.

Flooded volleyball fields across the school

The project works with local teachers, paying them a good salary, so to be sure of a good teaching quality, but also to be sure that teachers stay within the project rather than changing schools when a better opportunity presents itself.  The project will soon start up a free teacher training as well, as in many public schools teachers don't have the right knowledge to teach English.  They will be thought how to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL) and they will be officially certified upon finishing the course and passing the exams.  The only condition is that these teachers already have a decent knowledge of English as the course is about helping them on how to teach English, but not about giving them English courses.

Currently around 150 children attend classes at Angkor Tree Project.  All children live in the neighbourhood and there is no distinction between rich and poor, everybody is welcome.  This is a very local project and means a lot for the local community.  The school itself has 3 classrooms and currently there are 4 teachers (of which 1 foreigner who volunteers and 3 Cambodian teachers who are paid a fair salary).  The school also has good drinking water facilities and actually produces more drinking water than it needs, so it provides drinking water to the surrounding families who don't have access to drinking water themselves.

The entire neighbourhood of the school is currently flooded due to the raining season.  Some houses are flooded and water comes as high as just under the beds.  Still, the children come to school (sometimes they have to walk through knee-high water), because they are very motivated to learn English and they actually love coming to this school.

One of the classrooms

The school is quite modern, every class has a television screen on which exercises can appear, there are normal whiteboards and teachers have a laptop and use audiovisual content in their courses.  The project is very local and rather small, so it doesn't need huge amounts of money, still every cent is very welcome as there are the fixed monthly costs (such as the rent for the school building, teachers salaries, electricity, food for the children, ...).  There are also one-time and unexpected costs such as buying teaching materials, repairing defective school equipment, etc.

If you'd like to financially support this project, please visit the website www.theangkortreeproject.org.  Gifts starting at 40 euro are tax-deductible in Belgium, which means that for a gift of 40 euro, the Kingdom of Belgium will refund you 18 euro via your income tax declaration (only for Belgian citizens and money should be transferred via the account of SOL vzw - instructions on the Angkor Tree project website).

Note: I decided not to make any photos with children on them, as this is a serious school, not a zoo for tourists.