“How will they get from 6th grade to 10th?  There is a big hole in that desperately poor secondary school 4 kilometers down the road.   It only has 120 students enrolled, 12 teachers assigned but only 5 show up, and they have to live in a monastery to survive.”

As I step back and look at the progress we’ve made, the important change I see is in the kids themselves.   They are confident. Both the scholarship students in the city and the primary students in Chrauk Tiek display a level of joy and confidence I have never seen before. They used to be nervous, avoid eye-contact and physically shy away from me.  Now they look me in the eye, talk to me, touch me, they want to know. It’s almost like the vibration of their life force is higher. There is a lightness of being about them. It is belief in the future of their lives.

The children will not allow their parents to keep them away from school. One girl cried for half a day when her parents took her to a wedding celebration and broke their promise to have her back to school in time for class. I visited a first grade girl who broke her leg after being hit by a moto during our sanitation day.  She cried from the cot where she lay recuperating with her leg in a make-shift splint,  not because she was in pain but because she had missed a week of school.

This in a country where 50% drop out by fourth grade!

Our fifth and sixth graders show up on a day off from school to make crosses.   One of our donors commissioned them to make 150 little wooden crosses for an Easter fundraiser.  They will be paid $2 for each. With no tools and working in teams of 4, they each whittle away at a wood stick they brought from home. Once it resembles a cross they work to make it smooth by rubbing vigorously against the cement floor. The work is overseen by the three students who won the design competition we held for a $5 reward.   When the work is complete, and I pay them $300 for the 150 crosses bought by our donor, they decide not to pay themselves $2 individually for each cross made, they’d rather keep the money pooled together and buy something for their school. They want to purchase a pushcart so they won’t have to carry water anymore.   The cart will feature painted letters “donated by the 5th and 6th grade class 2010.”  I am certain this is the first time this has ever happened in the entire country of Cambodia.

Most kids don’t make it to 5th grade.  Ours never miss.

I have a new dilemma. I am concerned about our 49 wonderful, dedicated, smart sixth graders - where will they go next year?  We don’t have enough room for all of them in the scholarship program in the city, it’s really for high school anyway. How will they get from 6th grade to 10th? There is a big hole in that desperately poor secondary school 4 kilometers down the road. It only has 120 students enrolled, 12 teachers assigned but only 5 show up, and they have to live in a monastery to survive.

Then something completely amazing happens. The Chrauk Tiek Primary School Supporting Committee decides to share it’s meager resources with the Banteay Branak Secondary School Supporting Committee.    We don’t have the budget to expand full throttle to the secondary school so they will share the primary school budget until we do.  One thousand dollars per month is budgeted to the primary school program, five hundred of that for teacher support. The remaining five hundred is allotted for supplies and sustainability projects.  They’ve decided to use this five hundred to help the secondary school committee get started until we can provide their own program budget.

The first thing they will need is barbed wire. The Bonteay Branak committee will prove their commitment to partnering with SSI by building a fence around the school yard on their own.   The community will contribute the wood poles and labor.  It may not sound important to education to us but it is important to them.   It is something they know how to do, an  achievable goal proved necessary by the cow that enters the school room during our meeting.

This new school committee is energized by our discussion. We draw out their vision on a big piece of flip chart paper.  I am surprised to learn that they dream of having a high school here.  It’s clear that the biggest problem is attendance of the teachers. So we discuss priorities and once again it shifts from cement fences, playgrounds and buildings to happy, well-supported teachers.  They understand what it takes to support a teacher: housing, a bathroom, food and salary.  We decipher the difference between one-time expenses and ongoing expenses - food and salary, that’s the hard part. This is the focus of our sustainability program, and they get it.   It will take 5 years to achieve this goal. Once again, I am certain this committee of illiterate women is smarter than the government. Like moms everywhere, they want their kids to go to a good school.  What most aid groups don’t seem to realize is that when you have a strong school, the kids will come.  There are several programs out there actually paying families to send girls to secondary school. This idea is not only unnecessary, it actually undermines community solidarity.   When you have a strong school built by a community that participates, families see value in education and the kids come!

The challenge now will be to raise the $45,000 we need to expand our program to the secondary school before the school committee loses it’s momentum. Eleven members of this committee have already attended a two day Attitude Forum  to jump start the personal transformation needed to begin their leadership training.

Can we raise the money to keep pace with their belief in us?

By:Kari Grady Grossman

PHNOM PENH and CHRAUK TIEK, CAMBODIA-It only takes three weeks for the corruption in Cambodia to really start irritating me. It makes me sassy.

On our way out of Phnom Pehn, heading to school with a van loaded with supplies, we are stopped at a checkpoint by policeman demanding bribes. It’s only 2,000 reil (roughly 50 cents) but with every motorist passing by it quickly adds up. The amazing thing is that they do it with such impunity. This is no secretive slight of the hand exchange. At least 5 policeman  in full blue and white uniforms, stand in the middle of the road taking a payment from each car, while their commander and two deputy’s sit at a table on the side of the road shoving the bills into a large suitcase full of money. It’s a spectacle I can’t resist.

I jump into the front seat of our van and whip out my video camera to capture the whole thing. The policeman at our window insists that we were going over the 40 km speed limit which would be impossible in the crawling traffic. I pretend I don’t understand him and speak back in English, but we weren’t going over 40! He is confused by the encounter, and we pass without payment. The driver and our staff chuckle with delight at the way the police don’t want to mess with a “barang” (foreigner) with a camera. I had to jump into the front seat and repeat the process three times before we left the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

I love to mess with them.

That evening in Chrauk Tiek village, Paul and I share a beer at my favorite dessert stand. Walking home through the village in the dark under a blanket of a thousand quite stars, we keep pace side by side with a caravan of oxcarts hauling huge tree trunks from the forest. It is the illegal timber trade that fuels the economy of this town and fills the pockets of the military police. We see the MP come to the side of the road with his flash light intending to collect his bribes. Paul and I pretend like he is there to greet us, and we take great pains to compliment him on how well he is keeping his place picked up, thanking him profusely for supporting the children and their efforts to keep the town clean.  We filibuster until all the oxcarts have passed without stopping to pay him. He spot checks them with his flashlight, but is culturally obligated to continue to receive our compliments. We tell him what a wonderful example he is to the whole community by keeping the garbage under control and walk away, secretly satisfied that we stood between him and his quarry.

Corruption has even infiltrated the United Nations World Food Program.  I sent a message to the country director about the problems we are having with the school director being hassled to pay rice kick backs to the distribution network above him.  The “power man” is a provincial education department employee called Duon who is tasked with the job of liaison with the World Food Program in making food requests and deliveries to schools. He claims to be doing the job volunteer, that’s why he demands some rice. In an attempt to please him, our school director has tried to cut three of our malnourished kids from the take-home food ration program, reducing 18 kids to 15 who are supposed to receive 18 kilos of rice a month. But Paul won’t let him do it, so Duon does his best to make the director’s life difficult, hassling him with paperwork and not answering questions by telephone, threatening to find something wrong and shut down the program. The World Food Program has strict rules to ensure that no rice is pilfered, and Paul stands behind Sokha the stockroom keeper in making sure they are followed to the letter. He will not allow the three children to be cut from the program. The school director is distressed.

“But this is the way the system works,” he says, “you can’t change it.”

Want to make a bet.

Within 24 hours of my message to the World Food Program country director, three field monitors show up. We tell them everything. The director and stockroom keepers receive phone calls from Duon while the meeting is going on; he claims to need the party to stick together. They tell him they have no idea what is going on, it’s NGO business. It’s not the first report of Duon’s shenanigans that the field monitors have heard. Do you want him removed? They ask us. Yes, absolutely, we say.

We have a long, positive and productive chat with the World Food Program field monitors about how World Food Program and Sustainable Schools International could partner to help them make their school breakfast program more successful. The truth of the matter is, it can’t be done without us. The attitude and leadership training we provide on a daily basis is crucial to strengthening a community’s ability to participate in the school breakfast program on the level the World Food Program expects.

The corruption is so undermining to a community’s ability to be honest, and to build trust and solidarity. The poor school director is in a very difficult position; we require him to be honest, and his government bosses require him to be dishonest. Honesty is the foundation of trust, trust is the foundation of solidarity. When the government employees act dishonestly, the community refuses to participate, which means they can’t communicate, and this is the root of the problem. It is the government of Cambodia that is keeping the people poor.

Paul is surprised and delighted by the World Food Program response. It’s you they’re afraid of he says. You’re American, and here that represents so much power that everyone is afraid of you. I’ve never felt so proud to be an American.

The schoolyard children flock to me for the hugs, I give out gratuitously. Adults hang out at the school just to be around Paul. Like flies to a lantern, they just want to be near us to feel the warm rays of honesty, kindness, and love.

There is hope.

By Kari Grady Grossman

CHRAUK TIEK, CAMBODIA-Chrauk Tiek has great food and everyday someone from the school committee brings me a tasty treat: bananas, papayas, coconut, and live chickens. The school breakfast cooks stay all day to prepare lunch and dinner as well- a mountain of fresh vegetables, hand pounded sweet brown rice and the world’s best chicken, skinny but delicious; a whole new experience in “free range.”

Thankfully, we have a very nice bathroom now, complete with two private stalls and a tile lined shower featuring a Khmer style cistern and plastic saucepan to dump cool river water over your head. This was the School Supporting Committee’s sustainability project last year, and I have to say I am quite pleased with the result, not only for my usage, but for the six guests teaching English. Each one of them ended up making a donation to the school. It is also special for the teachers, who are living in the teacher residence we occupy this week. It’s the first bathroom they’ve ever had in their lives.

We spent the afternoon of our Sanitation Day lounging in hammocks and taking refreshing dips in the river, feeling very satisfied with ourselves.

I held a training with Soka, our intrepid librarian, to hold story hour with the new Khmer language early reader system I had printed. She even has a “big book” to work from in front of the class. Soka is one of our gems. I met her four years ago when she bravely stepped forward, while pregnant with her fourth child, to give me a letter detailing her distress about the illegal logging that had descended upon her village. Since then I have learned that Soka is one of those impeccably honest, soft-spoken but strong willed women that holds a community together. She volunteers for every NGO project that comes through town, but she loves her job with us best.  It is the only one that pays her.  She shows up every morning at 4 am to dole out the UN World Food Program rations from the stock room; she is the only one trusted with the key.  After cooking, serving the children breakfast and cleaning up, she opens the library for the children after their first recess, all for $45 per month. She grew up in an orphanage and graduated 8th grade, which is a high level of achievement for a woman her age and economic level. She is interested in the new early reader books but clearly tired. I hope we can find a way to give her more support.

The library needs more bookshelves and a ceiling installed to make it cooler. The tin roof bakes in the sweltering heat, which makes the space unbearably hot in the afternoon.  Chanta, one of our Khmer - American volunteers from Minnesota, has brought a donation from her home community. She donates the bookshelves, a table for the director’s office and a thatch roof hut to give the children for a place to read outside in the cool breeze.

In the evening, the school committee members gather to eat dinner with us in the cooking shelter next to the stock room. The pleasant feel of our achievements gathers into a sing -a- long. Ek Chun, a small statured Souy man who’s daughter Saram is our scholarship student who will become the first Souy girl to ever go to high school, has decided that his gift to me is a song. He starts to sing a beautiful, stretched tone love song, and we all clap to the beat. Then one-by-one each of the Khmers sings for us, each expressing their joy in Khmer culture’s unique way. No one seems inhibited, except of course we westerners who can’t find a tune to save our life. The best we can come up with is John Denver songs and Oh My Darlin’ Clementine. It feels both tribal and spiritual, like the connection between our souls is celebrated.

The good vibes of our singing is cut short by the Chinese New Year Party we must attend at Vong Vaughn’s house.  He is the chairman of the School Supporting Committee. I don’t want to insult him by not showing up. So we walk the half kilometer in the dark clapping to Khmer songs until we reach the loud music pulsing from his yard. I subject myself to another ear splitting go in the Romvong circle. Thankfully, since we are not the hosts it is easy to excuse ourselves when we’ve had enough and the party can go on all night without us.

Walking back in the dark, I am beckoned into Chen’s home, another member of the school committee, one of our favorite ladies who is well loved by Paul for her endless contributions of delicious treats. She scoops up a fat hen from her yard and ties its feet upside down with the plastic bag and hands it to me. I’ve never been given a live chicken before, but feel compelled as I carry it home to tell the upside down bird how lucky it is to be a Cambodian chicken. I explained how horrible it is to be a chicken in America, so she should consider herself blessed. She will be delicious in the morning.

The chicken comes with us and all the kids on a field trip to Piem Levia Lake the next day, giving us the chance to show our foreign guests just how low the economic situation can get in Cambodia. Our lorry full of children passes through the neighboring village of Sre Srap, where people seek out an existence from who knows what and dirty faced, naked children abound. Their school is in our target area. It only has 93 students and one teacher, and she has a fourth grade education; at least 3 days a week she’s gone. 90% of the children in this village don’t go to school at all.

The kids, the chicken, cooking implements, hammocks and table china for 30 are hauled through the forest to Piem Levia Lake, which in the dry season resembles more of a huge mud puddle. The chicken is boiled with a preparation of rice and peanut sauce with vegetables and fresh cashews we picked from the trees. The children splash and squeal ecstatically in the water. They’ve found three leaky dugout canoes and are playing battleship, continuously overloading and sinking their vessels. The Canadian teachers joke about what the mortified safety chaperones in our home would say. This is no matter. It is so pleasant to see children who have nothing expressing their joy with wreck less abandon.

By Kari Grady Grossman

CHRAUK TIEK, CAMBODIA-Cambodian dance is called Romvong.  It involves a large group of people moving in a circular fashion around a center piece, while twirling the hands from the wrist.  Khmers look graceful doing this, and westerners look like clowns.  Nevertheless, we all have a good time at the school dance.  The kids ruled the Romvong circle. The parents largely stay to the outside and watch. The rented karaoke speakers from the wedding entertainment shop blast Khmer love songs at a deafening volume into a dark school yard with 300 people participating in the spectacle.   Alternatively, groups of little boys and girls surrounded me with their big smiles and gyrating hand gestures for a chance to dance with “Niat Srey Carrie” - that’s me. It was so cool and so happy.   No wonder we have kids at school from sun up to sun down everyday - it is the most happening place in town.

The only security issues were the two drunken policemen who were invited by cultural obligation. They were so drunk and high that we were a little afraid they might fall over and the AK-47 strapped on their backs might go off.   They are the worst people in town.   Three doors down from the school gate, the civilian police and military police sit drinking and gambling all day, while 24 / 7 oxcarts stop in front of their house and pay bribes for the illegal tree trunks they carry from the forest.   These guys are complete pigs with fat bellies and a disgusting squalor of garbage surrounding their outpost.

Can you imagine the cultural mountain we need to move in order to instill the value of responsible parenting in this context? Paul and I often catch each other’s eye and just shake our heads. What we are doing for the whole community is a lot like parenting, and we are trying to show them a different kind of role model. I keep in mind a little sign in my mother-in-law’s bathroom - Children learn what they live.

We responsibly turned off the music at 10 pm which by Cambodian standards this is sacrilege.  By this time the littlest kids are starting to lay down to sleep in the school yard. It’s a school dance after all, and the children need to get some rest. They have a big day tomorrow. All night they’ve been stressed out from the adults throwing garbage around the school yard and trying diligently to keep up with it. At home they cry to their parents about how hard they try to keep their home clean.

In the morning over 400 of them fan out into the village to pick and burn the foul stench of garbage that fills every yard and alley in the little market village called “Spean Dyke” across the bridge. These are the wealthiest people in 5 villages that our school serves, and most of the kids come from the much poorer farming villages surrounding it. This is where our cultural change begins. Even the village chief joins in to model the behavior, and it is absolutely unbelievable that a village chief would pick up someone’s garbage. I am really proud of him. Son Sen inherited the title of village chief, but the poor guy has zero education or leadership training. However, he is smart enough to see that methods Paul and I are using work from the inside out. That feeling is the spark of hope we are trying to fan up into a bonfire.

We start our sanitation work at the hungover military policeman’s house.

The Sanitation Day was a complete success in terms of the solidarity shown by the school community.  But I have to say that this is by far the most disgusting thing I have ever done. Thankfully, I had brought 8 pairs of leather work gloves as gifts for the men on the school supporting committee.  I donned a pair of these and played the part of a good role model, helping pick up copious amounts of plastic, straws, shoes, rice bags, old clothes, the list goes on and on.  I mean this was completely gross but with almost 450 people working, yard by yard, alley by alley, the job got done in record time.  Pile after pile we burned and it stunk.   Paul walked up and down the road with a loud speaker and individually we asked each homeowner to please help us maintain a clean town.  We explained how important it is for the children to be healthy so they can go to school.

The flies carry disease from garbage to the food, and this is why everyone gets sick, it is like eating your own shit we told them. When we announced we were getting thirsty, the shop owners started donating crates of water. That was amazing in and of itself, because it is always so difficult for the school director to get any sort of help from these people, even though all their children attend our school. I imagine there was tinge of shame for them in watching “Niat Srey Carrie” pick up their foul - I don’t really care what emotion it takes to get them to change. The most powerful statement of all was to have “Professor Paul,’ 6 white foreigners, all 6 teachers, 5 members of the school committee and the village chief all helping their children.

After about 3 hours we were not quite finished, but we were exhausted so we called the children back. We all walked back to school down the middle of the street singing “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.”  Then we chanted “Lian Dy Saboo - Wash Hands Soap” and went to the water well to do just that.

Son Sen, the village chief, said he would hold a council meeting with the other village chiefs to come up with the system to maintain a garbage disposal system.

Even the military policeman promised to help enforce the people to pick up their trash.

We’ll see.

By Kari Grady Grossman

CHRAUK TIEK, CAMBODIA- My days are filled with the squeals of happy children and meetings with school supporting committees.  So many people are supportive.  It’s a striking contrast to the secondary school I visited yesterday where the school yard is treeless and dusty and no children play.

I met with a 16 member school committee, most of them illiterate women.  The principle began the meeting by saying that he thinks “it is an exciting day, from today we can progress.”  They are so incredibly excited to have the chance to work with us.

We used the beans again for each person to express their opinion on core values they identified as important to their success. Again, trust and honesty scored very low.  We talked about why that is so. Our school director bravely stood up to admit openly the mistakes he has made in the past and how it undermines community trust. We talked about how courageous it is to admit when you are wrong.   We laid out a road map of the 5 year process we will take to help the community sustain the school.  The first step is developing trust.  Interestingly, they also identified participation, communication and honesty as the way to build trust.   These people are much smarter than the government gives them credit for.

Today, we discussed a power tiller.   The school committee at our primary school has decided that purchasing a power tiller and renting it out is a small business they want to start to support the school.  Everyone wants to rent the power tiller because it only takes a half day to plow a hectare, a task that normally takes several days by hand.

There are amazingly complex ramifications about how this program must be run and facilitating their thought process took most of the morning.  I was truly amazed by a turn the discussion took when one man suggested that each family should contribute 500 riel to the school every month, and they could save that up to help support the school.

“We can’t depend upon the donor forever,” he said.  “We must do this for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren….forever….we must learn how to support the school ourselves.”

OH MY GOD ….WHAT A STUNNING BREAKTHROUGH!

The discussion continued as we explored several ways to reach our goal…..and everything comes down to those core values:  Participation, Communication, Honesty, Trust, Solidarity. One man actually said, ”we were in the dark, and Kari brought us the lantern.”

I can’t believe how incredibly well this is going.

More tomorrow….. we have invited the whole community to a school dance. The sound system has just cranked up and it’s blasting Cambodian Love songs into the school yard outside my window.

Hundreds of people gather, and the kids have a fantastic time. They’d dance all night long if we let them.  But we will have to cut it off early because tomorrow is a big day, the first ever community sanitation day. The whole school, school committee, Khmer teachers and 6 foreigners volunteering to teach English this week will all take to the streets in the village tomorrow and pick up all the damn garbage!

By Kari Grady Grossman

CHRAUK TIEK VILLAGE, CAMBODIA-It’s hard to find words to describe the positive changes at the school this year.   I feel like we have reached a critical mass of understanding with the villagers, and they are coming out in droves to support the school.

It is impressive.  It is unbelievable.

The government is noticing us as the best school in Aural District and possibly all of Kampong Speu Province.  This is largely due to the presence of our education officer Paul Chuk, but he won’t stop there.  He wants this to be the model school for all of Cambodia.   This may not be as much of a stretch as it sounds.  We definitely have the highest community participation in the country and that is the key to sustainability.

I was amazed at the number of people who showed up for the “welcome ceremony.” This time we didn’t have any long-winded government officials droning on and on while children sweat in the hot sun - thank god.   No, this was an intimate affair with just the two village chiefs, 12 members of the school supporting committee, and over 300 villagers sitting under the shade of two old army parachutes.  The school director pointed out the long list of accomplishments of the past year, and I did my best to thank everyone for their participation, especially Paul Chuk who has been the key to success in our Leadership program.

I felt choked up when I thanked the three women who show up at 4 am every morning to cook the school breakfast over hot fires stirring vast caldrons of rice, mung bean and a soup of papaya and mackerel. The world food program contributes the fish and rice, but the community contributes the papaya.  Each week a different class is responsible for bringing one papaya each to school.

The kids love the breakfast and it has increased attendance to capacity, hardly any students are absent ever, even during the harvest season.  The teachers say they concentrate better and seem to be brighter.   The World Food Program is difficult to pull off.  It requires a community that participates, is honest and organized.  Only 3 schools in the district have it and the world food program inspectors can show up at anytime, if any food is missing they will loose the program.

I pointed out that last year the school supporting committee had set 2 goals.  The number one problem to fix was the children hungry at school - mission accomplished!! CLAP CLAP.  The second goal was for every child to get a high education, and we have 6 scholarship students studying secondary, high school and college in Phnom Penh.  This proves we can make progress when we set a goal and work together to achieve it. But I can’t do it without you, I said.

Then the most amazing thing happened.

The people started talking about how important it is to help Kari!  One by one they took the microphone and pledged their support, whether it was helping with the school breakfast, or contributing an oxcart of wood sticks for the cooking fires, or cleaning up the yard, or contributing food to the teachers - they really understood that this is about creating a better future for themselves.  And they believe that we are committed to helping them for as long as is necessary.

A man called Kong, whose son is our only scholarship student attending college, asked a great question.  What can we do for the ones who already drop out of school?  They had dreams and ideas about what life skills are needed that the school could help teach:  sewing, mechanics, beautician, a power tiller for agriculture and a pond for every house were a few suggestions.

Tomorrow we meet with the school committee to determine which of these is their priority.  I suspect we will have full attendance.

By Kari Grady Grossman

NIGHT ON THE TOWN- When I picked up the scholarship students at the boarding house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh,  I was met with big bright smiles.  These 6 bright faces, who one year ago had been shy and completely destitute, were now brave enough to practice their English on me.

One of our brightest kids, Sokea, said, “Before I have scholarship I was destitute, but now after I take attitude forum class, I have hope.”  His smile widened.  He wants to study agriculture and rural development.

Saram, the Souy girl, who is our youngest scholarship student, is attending 8th grade at the secondary school. Last year she couldn’t even say “hello” and she had never been beyond her village.  Now she trys to speak English a little and is studying to become a Khmer teacher.   She is destined to become the first Souy minority girl to ever go to high school.

And Sarim, the Souy boy on scholarship, wants to be a math teacher.

So Phally, an 11th grader, wants to be a medical doctor in the village.  Her brother So Theary, also grade 11, wants to be an engineer.

And Sem Kong, our only college student, is the oldest and the leader of the pack.  He wants to be an English and Computer teacher.

One year ago they had no idea what they wanted to be.

Now they can dream.

We loaded them all up in a tuk tuk and met with the principle at the high school to make sure they were on track to graduate with the necessary courses to pursue their dreams.  I could not be more proud of them.

With all 8 of us piled in a tuk tuk we went out for a night on the town.  We stopped for dinner at my favorite clay pot place, where the food is served raw in big piles of meat and vegetables.  You cook it yourself in the soup pot at the middle of the table. The kids thoroughly enjoyed gorging themselves on “big food.”  They liked the soup better than pizza.

Then we took them to the Sorya shopping center, which is a newly built vertical mall.   Riding escalators was like an amusement park thrill ride.   At the top of the 10-story building,  we stepped outside the top-floor restaurant to the oberservation deck overlooking the city.  The kids were in awe.   The stared wide eyed.  They gaped at the tiny cars and people.  They saw the vastness of the world for the first time.  The students got a new view, and with it, their dreams grew bigger.

Wait till you hear what we are going to do next with our scholarship program!

I am leaving for Chrauk Tiek village today and will write as often as our internet connection allows.  Great things are happening there, too!   We are being noticed by the government as the #1 school within the province. There is high demand to attend what is normally considered a poor, dysfunctional rural school, yet the education one can receive at the Grady Grossman School is better than what is available in Phnom Pehn. And the best part is…it was all done by the local people.

When you’re the director of a humanitarian organization in Cambodia just about everyone you meet asks you for a job. There aren’t many good jobs in this town, but when I tell them our positions require living in the rural village and working with marginalized and desperately poor people (even by Cambodian standards) our prospect loses its appeal. We only have one staff in Phnom Penh, everyone else works in the village.

But every once in a while I meet someone who gets it.

Pen Vibol appears to be such a person. A middle-aged man in his early fifties, he’s looking for a new job. He hands me his name card - Seminary Institute of Religion, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, coordinator. He’s not a Mormon, he just organizes their scholarship program here in the city. Everyone focuses their education efforts in the city hence the city grows, the real education problem is in the rural villages where nothing ever changes. You’re right, he says.

They don’t need to build more schools until they figure out how to run the ones they have. Vibol agrees.

I recently read a UNESO report entitled ” Reaching the Marginalized” a review of education efforts in developing countries around the globe. It’s a pretty complicated analysis of what works and doesn’t work in helping marginalized people gain access to education. In my experience there is one way to “reach the marginalized,” simply reach out to them. That means live with them, talk with them, and know them. It’s not that complicated, it just takes a willingness to be in community with them. It’s hard to do from an air-conditioned office in Phnom Penh or a Land cruiser. It takes very special people to love the poor the way our education officer Paul Chuk does. We are working on a training system to teach new education officers and build our capacity to expand into the secondary school. The job is not for everyone. It takes a person with the right personality.

Pen Vibol has a typical Cambodian story. During high school in the 1970’s, when the Khmer Rouge regime took over, his parents were killed, and he was arrested and he was arrested for speaking French. When the militants shoved a book in his hand, he faked illiteracy by turning the book upside down and acting stupid. They blind-folded and shot him anyway but the bullet missed his head. Afterward, while living in an orphanage, the communists sent him to Russia to study locomotive engineering. He spent the 80’s in Leningrad and speaks Russian fluently. Can you imagine a half starved Cambodian kid living in Leningrad for 11 years? Sent back to Cambodia in 1993 to work on a unfunded train system, he found himself jobless most of the 90’s and got by as a motto driver. Nowadays, he tows the line of the Latter-Day Saints. He’s got the universal Cambodian survival skill - whatever it takes.

Vibol told me that in Russia teachers who choose to go teach in rural areas of the cold north are paid more; those who choose to live in the warm south are paid less. Teachers can decide what is more important to them, lifestyle or money. If Cambodia really wants to change the education access of the rural poor, the answer is quite simple: Pay the Teachers More! I wonder if UNESCO took the money they paid PHD’s to offer their analysis and simply paid a group of teachers more, would they find their answer “reaching the marginalized?” Maybe they don’t really want to reach the marginalized, maybe it’s more interesting to study the problem than fix it.

A middle-aged man who speaks, Khmer, French, Russian and English, who understands the importance of paying teachers to do a difficult job and the personal sacrifice of teaching the marginalized. Vibol may just be the perfect person to train with Paul and learn how to be an education officer at the secondary school we want to expand into. Who is going to help me pay him what he deserves? UNESCO?

Thanks to Jill Hunter of Lander, Wyoming, the school now has playground equipment for the students.  In this weekly letter to Kari, Paul Chuk, who teaches English at the school and works with the School Sustaining Committee, wrote about Jill, Jenna and Justine’s visit to the school.  Jill recruited ten sponsors during the first annual campaign.  She hosted a fundraiser with Amanda Prom for the school on January 24th at the restaurant she operates in Lander.

Jill, Jenna and Justine are great guests and easy to please. They are amazing people who have shown great interest in our school.  Jill was here in 2005.  What a difference since she’s was here a few years ago she said.  She also said that there are many changes from inside the school ground to inside classrooms to the way students reacted.  They were thrilled to see our students speak some English.  They were impressed to hear our students sing ABCs, Old Mac Donald, and If You’re Happy songs.

The children love all the playground equipment.  They especially love to ride on the merry go round.  Beside the playground equipment, our special guests bought us a set of badminton, a soccer ball, two small balls, and a volley ball. They also gave us $40 to buy the uniforms for our me’sn basket ball team since they are number one in the district and need to move on to compete in the province level.  We are grateful to all of them for helping us.