Newsletter 15 - Our Community Education Center (school) Newsletter posted 4 March 07
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IN A VERY SHORT SPACE OF TIME WE HAVE GONE FROM THIS......... ..........TO THIS. |
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We're Officially Registered - So much has happened that I'm not quite sure where to start. First of all, on 19th February we became officially registered in Cambodia. Our official organisation name is Helping Hands Cambodia and you can now access our website at the following address www.helpinghandscambodia.com The old website name still works as well, basically both names go to the same home page.
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| School Opening - We officially opened the school on 1st
December, 2006 and celebrated with a giant party for all the children.
Richard, Linda and Thomas Sherbon from Australia were visiting at the
time so they were thrown into the thick of it. Linda was given the
job of official photographer, Thomas helped hand out lollies and
organise races and Richard, who is a doctor, held a small medical clinic
after the official ceremony and saw quite a number of people with
various medical complaints (more about that in the next
newsletter). After the official speeches and blessing by the monks
we turned it into a real party with balloons, lollies, sack races and
three legged races, which were new to the children, so created a lot of
merriment.
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100's of students came to the opening ceremony. |
Monks gave a traditional blessing. |
Thomas towered above other children his age. |
The sack races were a big hit. |
Dr Richard examining a young patient. |
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 300 Amazing Students - We were amazed at how many children
registered to come to our school. We expected about 150 - instead
we had 300 children register. That was three months ago and the
numbers haven't dropped off at all. |
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  I've been constantly in awe at how much the
children have learnt so far and how eager and enthusiastic they
are. Our teacher, Sopeap, is also doing a fabulous job, though I
think we may need to help him out by getting another
teacher.
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 Reading Room - Many of the children are so eager that they
arrive at school well before the class is due to start so we have set up
a reading room. Before we built the school there were basically no
books at all in the village, apart from the most basic school
books. The children LOVE books and the reading room is extremely
popular. We have one small room dedicated just to books which gets
pretty crowded so the children also sit outside on mats and
read. Just a couple of days ago we received a very generous donation of 200
books from the Asia
Foundation.
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| Water Filters - We are teaching the children the importance of drinking clean water and have provided 9 water filters in the school. Each child has their own cup with their name on it and they love the clean water. | ||||||
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Chanti and I transporting the 300 cups to the village. |
The older girls preparing the water filters. |
Enjoying healthy, clean water. |
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| Adult Classes - We started our adult classes about two weeks ago. Our teacher, Chunton, has had four years experience teaching adult literacy, numeracy and life skills. He teaches three evenings a week. Our first class attracted 4 students - two weeks later the number is up to 20, but we expect this to grow as the adults become less shy. We know there are people who are interested in attending but are scared or intimidated because of the fact that they have never had any schooling. I've asked Chanti to try and get them to understand that the classes are for people exactly like them. Our students in the adult classes range from 13 to 24 years old. Some attended school for one or two years but then had to stop because of poverty. I've been very surprised at some of the people turning up to our adult classes. There are several that have come from households that in the past we've found difficult to work with as we couldn't seem to find ways to get them to help themselves, they seemed unmotivated. So I've been very encouraged to see them eagerly attending our adult literacy classes. | ||||||
