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)




















< name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 10">

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