Back to School

Update from Cambodia – August 2010

I am writing to ask for funding for At’s ½ salary for another year and to update you on our work.

One announcement I would like to say right away is that my German host father used his 70th birthday as a fund raising opportunity and collected about $1,000 for projects for us. So now all I need is At’s salary and we can do a lot next year!! So we need $2,150 for another 12 months, starting in December.

Briefly, our plans include starting a mushroom farming small enterprise with 30 of the poorest families from three villages, developing teaching resources at the training college and contributing to New Teacher Starter Kits, supplying rain water catchers to poor families, developing chicken farming with poor families, and supporting a remote first grade.

If you would like to contribute to our work here, please send a check to Charlene Bredder c/o Karen Gilmore, 3795 Hickory Branch Trail, Suwanee, GA 30024

The Year in Review
I find it is now time to review another year—I suppose I am still wedded to an academic year, as I have been for most of my life. Of course the Khmer New Year is in April and the International New Year prompts reflection too. And now the start of the School Year sets me thinking again.

For the last few months, I have been keeping a Western schedule in the Cambodian heat, which is not something I recommend or find remotely survivable. There is a reason things are slower here and a reason when I see other Westerners trying to keep up their hectic schedules here that it all seems a bit insane. The rains have been late in coming and it has been the hottest recorded hot season in human history, apparently. People have been getting quite sick and there have been some deaths as well, due to lack of rain. The hygiene is not good here, with only about 30% of households having access to a toilet, so if the rains do not come, the water becomes more and more polluted and sickness and illnesses breed. There are now many scarecrows strategically placed at entrances to people’s yards and houses, and scary icons drawn on houses in order to ward off evil spirits. In a village where two people died, people have been drumming through the night for several nights to ward of evil spirits. Even the school principal bought firecrackers to scare bad spirits away. School kids came sleepily to school and meetings were held at the local pagodas to talk about how to boil water and wash hands and bury waste.

I am glad that as I write this, the rain pours down in sheets, alternately pitter-pattering and crashing on the tin roofs. It is a welcome sound, although I have gotten used to not planning on rain and being able to do what I want with my days. Today we cancelled going to buy large wooden posts to build a chicken house because the roads will be too muddy and we will not build in the pouring rain. Tomorrow At assures me that it will not be raining as much. We will see!!!

Village Work
Libraries
We are very excited about some developments that have taken place recently. First, we have one community library that we started as an experiment with Community Involvement in Schools money from a project with VSO and NEP. The school director and village chief recommended a house that has many people gathered watching TV, eating snacks, and hanging out. Now they read books too. We even see that some people are borrowing the books too. At an island school with three villages, we will put three more community libraries next week. The librarian at the school built three mobile book holders that are essentially suitcases for books—like a traveling salesman with wares, you can open the wood boxes and the library is open for business! Not only did the librarian build these, he had books from another project that he put in the boxes and we contributed some as well. We will buy more, making each box different and the villages can trade boxes every month, so that they have access to approximately 200 books over time. We got books about health, farming, simple life improvement ideas, as well as popular music, story books, and short picture stories. This will be an experiment to see if a village really takes on the idea and wants to establish a more permanent library.



Remote first grade
On the same nearby island, there is a remote village so far across the rice fields and deeply muddy roads that the small 6-year-old first graders cannot start school on time. It is simply too far for them to walk and they are not strong enough to ride a bike through the mud. No one in the village has started school on time. The director came up with the idea to start a “remote first grade” at a house in the village. The teacher will travel to the village and the children will attend school there. In second grade, they will go to the regular school, when they are bigger and can negotiate the roads. The village is supplying the house and posts for an extended roof. NEP will supply the teacher’s and students’ desks and chairs, and the metal for the roof. KCF will provide the teacher’s salary. The district office of education supports the idea and the school arranged for the teacher. We will support the teacher and provide resources and teaching ideas. It is exciting to have a great partnership and to have the villagers solving problems that are important to them.

Chicken farming
At and I are working with another NGO, Cambodian Children’s Advocacy Foundation, to help poor families increase their incomes and quality of life through chicken farming. CCAF held a chicken farming class which we attended with members from one family who we will start this project with. This family, a mother, her 20-year old son, and her 12-year old son, lives in the middle of a rice field. With Kampot Children’s Fund, we have been supporting younger child to attend school. We know them now for 2 years. A year ago, we suggested that they plant some trees for shade so that their tin-roofed grass hut would not be so hot. But the father had recently died of dehydration working in the salt fields and the mother was too beaten down (literally) to do anything. She cannot do much work because her husband beat her so severely. The older son had left the home. But now, he has come back and has built a fence around the property and has planted coconut trees. We bought mango trees and they planted those. It is exciting to see this place of violence blossoming under his work.

We went together to the chicken farming class. I thought my Khmer was pretty good, but I was quite confused about what we should be feeding the chickens. There is a mixture of:
1. 6 parts water and one part the following:
2. vinegar
3. EM (Effective Micro-organisms)—some sort of magic stuff that keeps immune systems up and is all-natural
4. Corn sugar (burnt)
5. Rice wine – I am serious!

Apparently, chickens need to be well-fed as well as happy on their rice wine!!! This mixture is given to them to drink and mixed into their food as well as sprinkled around the chicken house.

We went to see a chicken house that a family has built. They have been supported by CCAF for 6 months and in this time have bought a plow and are trading chickens for a cow to plow with. They got a tarp to extend the sheltered place of their grass house. And their children can go to school and have enough to eat. It is very exciting to see this level of progress in such a short time!

There is a lot of work to do still: we will support the family with buying the large wood for the structure and help with our labor to build the 3-roomed chicken house. We will give them 5 hens and a rooster and they have to give the same back in a year, so that we can continue for other families. If this goes well, we will expand to other families At works with as he continues supporting children with the Kampot Children’s Fund.

In addition to the monetary support for buying supplies, emotional support is crucial. When we stopped for breakfast, the mother would not sit at the table with us. At was able finally to get her to come sit and eat. She sat at the back of the lesson and was very quiet. For lunch, she stood under a tree until At coaxed her back to sit with us at the table. I hope that slowly her confidence will increase as she becomes involved in helping her own family and sees begins to see herself as someone who can do things. This will all take time. But we have made the first steps.

Teaching Work

Resources
We have made resources with students and I had a Resource Making Club of 6 highly motivated students. We met twice a week from 7 to 9 pm and cut and colored and laminated all kinds of things for their teaching. We played games and used the curriculum books to look at lessons and think of things they can do with the materials. I am so excited with this small experiment—they had great ideas for lessons and caught on quickly to activities for children to do.

Next year, we will have a room for resource making, some basic supplies, and hopefully some grant money to photocopy and buy tape for easy “laminating” (putting clear tape over paper is the same as laminating—keeps the moisture out, and is cheaper and quicker!).

Informal Interactions
I will use this summer to develop some “Evenings with Charlene” –informal learning opportunities including:
• basic theatre exercises --maybe developing into theatre skits to solve problems they have
• basic leadership ideas--maybe developing into a leadership club that proposes and carries out activities at the school
• basic communication and community building--maybe developing into a student counseling service run by students
• resource making and games playing--maybe developing into more resources related to the curriculum and lessons
• Harry Potter reading—maybe developing into a book club
• basic science experiments—maybe developing into a science club

And anything else I can think of to extend my interactions with trainee teachers. The key to understanding the above list is the part after the -- is the “maybe maybe maybe I hope” part. I will organize one or two evening activities and if it is interesting to students, then we will make a club and keep going. If not, I have to say it was nice and move on. I think that these more informal spaces will be more effective and I will have more time to interact, than the formal teaching times which are very limited to me.

You would think that after 3 years, it would be easy for me to communicate in Khmer, but of course, I still need a translator. My Khmer is good enough that I can say things and then look at students’ faces and find someone who seems to have understood and have them explain what I said. Crazy!!! But we will see. Given that 45% of the population is under the age of 15, I think it is a good strategy to work with young people and develop their capacity to think critically, make changes they want, and help them lead. The trainers are very nice but are busy and underpaid. If I can effectively work with the younger generation, maybe they will make changes needed to help develop the country, or at least their students!

Lessons Learned so far
Village well
We supported building a village well, which is finished and looks good but might not be deep enough to supply water consistently. We are in the middle of the worst drought in a while and so we will wait until next dry season to see how it fairs. It might have to be dug deeper, which will require some more discussions with the villagers about how to do this. We had the idea that supplying work to the village would be productive, but it has turned out that it would be better to only provide the supplies and have them build it for themselves. So next time: only supplies!

Playground
As part of our “Community Involvement in Education” project, we funded a playground for a local elementary school. It had all the elements of kids participating: they looked at photos of playgrounds I had taken in Germany, they drew their own ideas for what they wanted, they voted on the one they wanted most, they made a cardboard model, the man who built it came to see the cardboard model, we used a local metal worker.
BUT: the kids copied the pictures and did not understand the idea of designing their own (this is OK—at least someone asked their ideas, which is unusual). The older kids moved the younger kids’ votes. Great. The cardboard model was done in the hot hot sun, with me and a colleague as the only adults (and me not knowing how to do this cardboard model and my colleague being an artist and not a person used to working with children). You can see how this combination could go horribly wrong: I got sunburnt, the kids stole the supplies, we were there all day and in the end, the kids dismantled the thing due to strong winds and the principal never saw the model. Ugh. But they participated and now several village families have cardboard, staplers and strong glue for various household projects for which I am sure they will find those supplies useful!

The day the playground was installed, 100 children were out of control climbing on the structure, sliding down the slide standing up and 10 at a time, climbing up the slide, hanging off various edges and pushing and shoving so roughly that I was afraid they’d push me off the 8 foot tall slide. I swore never again.

But then I read a New Yorker article about the first playground in the US in New York City in 1900. The opening ceremony was cancelled when 20,000 children showed up and started jumping on the police cars and creating general havoc. I now count my playground project as a success!!! Only minor injuries so far and only 100 children who were out of control.
Seriously, next time I want to do something with / for kids, we will have more experiences in working together and developing leadership and ownership before letting them loose.

Overall
We are making great progress, step by step, and are getting to know the villages better. Through the Community Involved in School project, I have met 5 village chiefs, 3 from villages we will be working more in. They are really open to ideas and contribute as well. It is so important to have this support and involvement and to develop trust.

Again, thank you for your support and encouragement. It is sometimes difficult and isolating here, but generally we are surrounded by supportive and interested people who are working hard to improve their lives and the lives of others as well.

Wishing you a happy Fall,

Charlene and At

NGO Keep Going

Pictures : left :making our own books for a community library ("About Me")
next: school kids playing before school starts
next : the finished well with the first water. Sam At and the woman are the ones who have organized this.
next: Charlene working with a teacher on teaching methods; a village girl who benefits from the well
next: village house
next: building the well; cooking lunch while the well is being dug
next: digging the well; watching the well being dug
next: making resources from card board at the teacher training college
next: making resources; a very remote school with only scrubby trees around for miles (typical rural situation where our student teachers will be placed after graduating)




















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March 2010

From Charlene:

It has been a long time since the promised posts about the developments of our little NGO Keep Going. I find it hard to write about things that are happening, because on the one hand most are so mundane, and on the other, it’s only mundane because I am used to life here. So I will attempt to explain the ups and downs of our endeavors here.

I am really proud of Sam At’s approach to village work. We started this as an experiment, and he is doing a great job. He is very good at hanging out and talking and listening to people. He is using the Kampot Children’s Fund, which is a separate fund that supports poor children going to school, as a lever into the community. He asks school directors to recommend poor children for the fund to support. Then he follows up on these families and slowly integrates himself into the community, learning the issues.

Sam At has written a small piece about his experiences, which follows on from my piece here. We are trying to give both our perspectives as we continue this work.

If we can continue, we have some ideas for further projects: helping a very remote community to increase its agricultural production; building another well for families that have a long way to walk to haul water; mobile libraries; and small business lessons and support for people to think of their own ideas. We are finding that the longer we spend in a community, the more we get to know, and the better help we can provide.

First, the great successes:

1. The well is being dug!!!! We got the water in the area tested—there are 3 other working wells and a pond in the village that other families use. One of the wells is pretty contaminated with bacteria but two of the wells are quite good and have low bacteria counts. The pond is of course high in bacteria counts. In our survey for who will use the well and how they currently solve their water supply issue, we asked if they boiled the water. The answer was that they get the water from the pond and put ice in it, so it is drinkable. This is very sobering. So we will have to do some education around bacteria and water and filtering the water or boiling it first. Boiling it is expensive, so we will supply filters to 10 families (9 who will use this new well and the one family who has the highly contaminated well). We will do a skit to explain how people get sick from bacteria and how they can solve the problem….!

The well will be about 7 meters (21 feet) deep, which is about 15 pieces of pipe. We hired 4 local men to dig the well and find the place for it. Before finding the spot for the well, and digging, they offered a small offering to the gods to express thanks and gratitude for helping find the place. The first day, they dug 6 pieces of pipe deep and the next day the water was at the bottom of the well. The village women used the first water for washing clothes. The next water was clearer because of not digging for a day and that was tasted and pronounced very good. They will continue digging deeper so that water supply is assured throughout the dry season for 9 families. They are down to 12 pipe lengths now, and are using an old wheelchair seat to sit on as they are suspended by ropes, digging at the sides of the well to widen it enough for the pipes. We will put a cap on the well and build a simple rope and pipe pump so that it is easy to pump the water. Pat An, a 5^th grader in a wheel chair, will be able to help his family draw water if we put the pump in. We will also make a cement base around the well so that he can easily get his wheelchair near the well.

2. Group work boards for one school!!!!! One of the elementary schools we work with was heavily flooded last year in the rainy season because a dam broke upriver. The school hosts student teachers for their teaching practice. Part of the education reforms here is getting students to work in groups and have group discussions, instead of just listening to the teacher lecture. But the teachers and the student teachers could not put pupils into groups because all the boards for writing the answers on had been damaged in the flood. Because of some more donations to Keep Going, we were able to get 6 boards for each class. The most exciting part is that this idea came from the teachers, who really wanted it. Our students were saying they wanted to practice with group work. And the teachers requested 6 boards instead of 4. I have been saying for 2 years that groups need to be smaller, that they need more group boards in their classrooms because 8 or more children in a group is too big. The ideal size would be 4 or 5. So now, of their own suggestion, they have 6 boards, for an average group size of 6 instead of 8 students!!! I am so thrilled.

We went to buy the boards, which are sold in huge sheets. One sheet makes 6 boards, so we got 6 sheets, one for each classroom. The teachers went with me to buy everything. The next day, I came to school to find all the student teachers standing on desks sawing the on their day off from teaching. We glued light-weight frames around them so that the sharp edges of the wood would not hurt the students. Now, the teachers and students are using group discussions. The changes in teaching that these boards support is a very big step from just lecturing. These boards will continue to support teachers as we continue to develop new ideas in methods and allowing students to think more for themselves. The boards are great because they allow a group of students to discuss a question and write the answer together in chalk. The teacher then discusses each group’s answers. The boards can be used over and over again. We could learn a lot from this idea in the West, as we use way too many non-recycle-able resources. This is an easy solution which requires chalk and boards!

3. Resource making at the Teacher Training College—Over the last 3 years, trainers have started to realize the importance of teaching resources in helping to support student learning. At and I have been working to get resources that are good for each grade (students don’t know what grade they will be assigned to until a few days before school starts). Students will make some resources over the two years they are at the college and will take those to the districts when they start teaching in the rural schools. We visited some rural teachers who are in their first year of teaching and the challenges are immense: 50 students in a classroom and only 5 books; no electricity and sometimes no water; no photocopiers or paper . No books or library. So we hope to have some games that are flexible, teach some ways that children can help make resources out of locally available things (counting rocks or leaves for first and second grade, having students write questions in the bigger grades for games). We started some resources now and are having to refine what we do so that students practice it in their teaching before they leave the college too.

4. Literacy Activities in Elementary Schools We are working with two schools on a separate project to involve the community more. But before we can involve the community, the community needs something to be involved in. So at both schools, we are working with 5^th and 6^th grade students to write simple books for 1^st and 2^nd grade students to read. There are not many beginning readers at all and the literacy rates are low because children do not get to practice reading books at their level. Students have made beautiful books. One school will start a community library soon of these books so that people can come and read for a few hours each day. We will have the library at someone’s house and they will learn how to take care of the books and keep track of them.

Challenges and other issues

There are specific issues related to my job:

1. Resource making at the Teacher Training College We have a simple kit so far that will allow students to have some games, some words, a few wall charts and maps, and some simple resources (measuring sticks, number cards, letters, fraction strips, number strips). These will support their teaching in multiple grades. If we want each student to have a basic “Teacher Starter Kit” it will cost $10 per student. We have 200 students and so we need $2,000 per year to support this development. The first challenge is to find the money. The second challenge is to support students in learning how to use the resources so that their teaching is more interactive and their students are the ones who do the thinking. If anyone has some ideas for fund raising, let us know!!!

2. Village Work We have been talking to the villagers about planting some vegetables and trees, both for eating and for income-generation. We will need more money to help them start planting seeds and doing small-scale farming. We hope to start with 2-3 families and see how it goes and if it goes well, others will want to follow them too.

There are other issues related to living here and confronting larger global issues in our own back yard:

3. Environmental Issues The town of Kampot (the mayor of Kampot really) has decided that it needs to “be more beautiful”. This is a laudable goal. However, the governor has decided that chopping down all the trees near roads is a way to make the town more beautiful. First they started at the river front and only got a few trees down and forced the restaurants off the sidewalks. It became cramped and hot and unpleasant at the restaurants. I am not sure how this is supposed to attract more tourists? Then they suddenly appeared on my street. I had no idea this was a “policy” for the town. Before we knew what was happening, all the beautiful mango trees and shade trees in front of our neighbors’ houses were all cut down. If you did not cut it yourself, you’d have to pay the town to do it. And they stood over you while you cut your trees. It was very sad. The next day, the broken and twisted limbs still lying about, they came back for the potted plants. While I was gone, all the bushes lining our driveway were taken out. So now we are sitting in the hot sun, with dust coming into our homes at a higher rate than before with the trees. They say they will pave the road, which will lead to fast cars driving down a street which currently has toddlers learning to walk and small children running here and there. The culture has already changed: people don’t sit outside as much anymore. It’s simply too hot.

One week later, Chris was at the river front at night, looking at the National Forest Parkland across the way and saw that there were three separate fires on the mountain. It looked like a volcano, with the red fires spreading over large areas. They are clearing it for plantations or for logging, we are not sure. The same night, as Chris was watching the local owls (there are 4 large owls and they had a nest with chicks on the riverfront), a man came and told him that one of the owls “had died”. What happened is that someone killed it with a slingshot. The nest is gone as well. It really felt like Armageddon – the mountain burning up, the dead owl being carried away in a plastic bag, and returning to a denuded, dusty street.

These issues are issues faced every day in many parts of the world. That it can hit so close to home here is an indication of how vulnerable the population is. The street I live on has educated people, the foreign restaurants are run by educated and relatively well off foreigners. None of my neighbors nor the restaurant owners could stop the governor’s decision to cut the trees. Now we sit in the hot sun.

The forests of many developing nations are being set up in smoke every day to make room for farming, plantations, cash crops. We are losing the environment at astonishing rates but are not aware of it because usually no one is burning the mountain across the street from our house.

Confronting these issues here is quite depressing. My first instinct is to question what I can do at all here. How can anything I do matter if the environment is being destroyed and people cannot even take care of their own back yard in a reasonable way? But then I see that these issues are connected to so many global issues and solving these problems will take one step at a time. It is figuring out those steps that is hard. And seeing the slow slow progress is hard. I know that I am laboring in a world political environment that is not supportive of the changes I am fighting for here. But I suppose that is why I am here, in a way. I see that if things are to change, someone needs to keep fighting, one step at a time, and side by side with everyone else.

Thank you for your continued support. In a way, as it always is with this kind of work, the changes are small and slow, but that does not mean they are insignificant. We thank you for your faith in us, for your encouragement, and for your monetary support.

Charlene

From Sam At:

I am Yin Sam At- I am working with Charlene in the community. This year we are focusing more on helping kids in the rural areas to go to school.

Some reasons that I started to think about this problem is when I visit schools in the rural areas, I see that kids do not have enough stationary for school and do not have bikes, but the schools are too far for the kids to go by foot.

I have spent some time to visit kids’ parents with Charlene. We found out that all their parents could not afford stationary, clothes and bikes for their kids, because they work seasonally, cleaning dishes for wedding parties, harvesting in the rice field for somebody else in exchange for some rice…etc.

So first we are trying to help kids with the stationary and learning in school. But this does not change the family’s situation. They are still poor and depend on others to send their kids to school. I think that the parent’s situation can also affect the children’s learning.

Based on this real situation, I came up with the idea to change the way of thinking of children’s parents, such as suggesting to them to do small farming on their own land.

One day when I was in the village one kid’s parents came up to me and told me that she would like to have a well so that she can make the family’s situation better. Based on her suggestion I did a survey and found out that ten families around her house can benefit from the well if she has it on her land.

On the first day of digging the well, many people in the Village came and helped with this project and they were so happy to see and use the water from the well. Now they are using it for cooking and drinking. In a little while, I will try to encourage them to plant some vegetables and banana trees around the house. I am looking forward to see how much progress they can make in the near future.

I would like to thank everyone for the support for both of us who are overcoming many difficulties to get all the kids in rural areas in Kampot province to go to school and have better life in the future.

Sam At