Firstly may we thank you for your support of the “Rice for Life!” appeal last year. Over several months, with your help, we were able to supply rice to 65 of the neediest families plus 5 teachers’ families in a time of severe food shortage as the Khvein village faced famine.
This humanitarian relief reinforced our interest in the people of that peasant village whom we have been visiting over the past several years.
During the rice famine, we gave our commitment to the school to supply notebooks (exercise books) to all students who were enrolled. This came as part of a ‘strategy’ to encourage the stem of withdrawals from the school population – parents were faced with an economic choice, buying school books or buying rice.
Since the “Rice for Life!” appeal we have provided more uniforms, this time for grade 3, as well as construct a concrete path from the school gates to the school building – at last!
The 500 Project
What for this year? We have the 500 Project. Not the Fortune 500 of corporations in the wealthy west where education of children may be taken for granted, but rather than companies, it’s the children who represent the future prosperity of the Khvein village.
We believe that by helping to facilitate education of the children the long-term prospects of a healthier and happier future for the village will be assured. Our interest in this northern Cambodian village has always been focussed on the village primary school and we have been financially supporting it for a few years as well as providing other things for the children and some families.
In consultation with the school director, Mr Hour, Margaret and I plan to be in the village school to welcome the children back for their new school year. At the welcome, each child will be provided with a new tailor-made school uniform, notebooks for the entire school year as well as pens and pencils.
So we, and they, are looking forward to being present with them for the month of October. During that time we will be arranging for the construction of more library bookcases for the library we started at the school last year.
It has become our custom to take the school’s oldest grade class on an educational excursion to a silk farm and to a cultural centre. For many of the children, it’s their first experience of travelling on a bus! We have plans to do the same this year.
As we share with the villagers, we will be able to see at firsthand the families’ situation with rice stocks and we realise that more aid will need to be given.
We will also be meeting formally with the village elder, school director and teachers to discuss their views on what they really need. We have always been responsive to them, not wanting to be there telling them what they needed but rather reasoning that out together.
This, then is our 500 Project – to supply the needs of the school population and so encourage a school enrolment this year of 500 children. The Khvien 500!!!
What will be needed? To supply each child with a made-to-measure school uniform (shirt and pants or skirt), 12 exercise books, pens and pencils and take 100 children on excursions will cost US$6,400 (around A$9,000)
In this way we hope to encourage 500 children to be in school………………………….would you too like to help these children?