A First look at the work of our NGO

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The Executive Director, Sarath Doeur, of our NGO took us on a trip the first day of our assignment with the organization to a number of places on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, a city whose central area is ringed with magnificent palaces and beautiful, new governmental offices and whose boulevards are lined with gardens, promenades, and parks.

We drove first to what seemed to be an industrial backwater and rode along the railroad tracks lined with shacks whose inhabitants were methodically laying river snails along the tracks to dry out for later sale in the markets. Mothers were sitting on the ground outside their homes surrounded by babies and toddlers cooking meals for the day or products to be sold on the downtown streets. The anorexic dogs and semi-naked children sniffed and romped in the garbage-lined muddy walkway between and on the tracks as we walked past them. Then we moved along wooden paths between the hastily built shanties as our guide explained that the 150-200 families per community had been moved from central PP by the government, without compensation for the land the families had been forced to leave, to these new locations on the city’s outskirts. The government had provided no sanitation services, schools, health care or transportation to where the families earned their living 3 to 6 kilometers away. They were given no help in rebuilding the homes that the government had burnt down after the families were displaced.

For the poor of Cambodia, every family member is critical to the family’s income. Children as young as 4 and 5 years of age cook the food that is sold in the market, gather river snails and other items to be sold to help the family make money. And because there is a belief that it is corruption and contacts, not education, that provide access to a better life, parents are more anxious to have their children work during their childhood than go to school. And school is expensive. Even in the public schools, when the government doesn’t charge the poor for attendance, teachers ask the children for money for books and pencils and numerous other items that are used in the classroom. The parents of the communities we visited seem torn between wanting their children educated and wanting them fed.

Even before we saw them, we heard the children in the schools run by our NGO reciting their poems and alphabet verses. CVCD (Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development) supports schools in each of 5 communities. In some places, either private donors or CVCD built the schools. In two communities, the families themselves joined together to build their schools pouring the concrete and building the wooden desks. Parents sending their children to school have to sign a commitment certificate with CVCD that they will cooperate in allowing their children to attend school 2 to 3 hours a day for 5 days a week. These schools, projects of the Non-Formal Education segment of CVCD’s work, were set up so that children will be able to both attend school and help their families.

While the government of Phnom Penh doesn’t give any financial support to these schools, neither does it close down their doors. The schools are simply not part of the formal education process within the city. CVCD educates the children to grade 6 and then gives scholarships to graduates to go to CVCD’s Foreign Language Center where English, computer literacy and Japanese are taught. Some children are able to go into the Cambodian educational system.

As Sarath, fit and handsome in his crisp white Pierre Cardin shirt and black slacks, enters each classroom you can see the transformation of him from administrator to teacher. He was, in fact one of CVCD’s volunteer teachers when he was selected to become it’s head three years ago. As he smiles and makes eye contact with the wide-eyed children, who welcome us with the traditional Cambodian hands pressed together below the chin and a bow, Sarath becomes the joyful, passionate leader in the class as the real teacher recedes into the corner watching with pride and a bit of trepidation as Sarath puts the little ones through their academic paces. He invites some to the front of the class to do problems on the board or to sound out the words of a poem written in Khmer in their books. And after each child completes the task he urges all to applaud and recognize the effort.

In contrast to the unkempt children who hang around the outside of the doorway observing the visitors and the class, the students in the one room school houses are clean and dressed in the typical uniform of Cambodian students, a white shirt and dark pants for the boys and white blouse and dark skirts for the girls. Despite their poverty, their parents have made sure that these children are dressed for school.

Classes are scheduled for early morning and late afternoon ---- taking advantage of the cool of the day in the sweltering buildings and allowing the families to enroll their children in the family’s earnings during the middle of the day. In each class, we get a demonstration of what the children are learning even though we can’t understand what they are saying. We see how disciplined the students are listening to their teachers and neatly and painstakingly copying the Khmer words into their notebooks from either the board or the teacher’s recitation. Often Sarath will speak with us in English, which neither the children nor the teachers understand. The beautiful children watch us patiently ---- there are no discipline problems here. At one point, Sarath seems to be lecturing the children for a considerable time. I ask one of the staff who has accompanied us what the ED is saying and he tells me that Sarath is telling the children about his life and how he was a poor boy who went to school and then picked leaves to be sold at the market before and after class to support his mother and brother. He tells the children that it is through hard work and education that he was able to become the person he is today. He tells them that if they continue in school, they can come to the Foreign Language Center and learn English and get a job. They hang on his every word.

Later in the truck taking us back to Phnom Penh center, Sarath tells us that his father, a college professor, was taken away one day by Pol Pat as the 5 year old Sarath and his mother and brother looked on. His father was never seen again. Sarath, who grew up in a small village outside of Phnom Penh, struggled to go to school. His family had so little money that he couldn’t afford to buy the pencils that the teachers sold. While going to high school, he lived with his aunt on the opposite side of Phnom Penh from school. He walked to and from the school each day and worked before and after to pay for the privilege of attaining an education.

Sarath was a teacher in a Private School when he began teaching English as a volunteer with CVCD. He is dedicated, as is CVCD, to eradicating poverty in Cambodia. His life’s work is quite a tribute to his father’s memory.

I think that we each felt inspired and frustrated by what we had seen that day. Inspired by what CVCD has accomplished in providing an education to so many children (at least 80% of the children of each community attend the schools) who have been abandoned by the government that is supposed to provide the social and economic safety net for them and doesn’t. And frustrated that there is so much to do to help, not just the children, but the parents as well, to emerge out of the cycle that poverty creates.

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Comments

[Eric and Lise]

Thoughts from Eric and Lise
It's great to hear about the amazing work CVCD is doing -- and I thought the New York City public schools had problems. Thanks for the update! Keep writing!