SCC News

2008-09 Year-in-Review

2009-08-07T11:33:00Z

Find out what great things the SCC team and the communities we support have accomplished in 2008-09: http://www.schools4cambodia.org/files/folders/sccnewsletters/entry319.aspx

Student Sponsorship Programme 2008-09 Annual Report

2009-08-07T11:29:00Z

Read the latest news from our 2008-09 Student Sponsorship Programme here: http://www.schools4cambodia.org/files/folders/sccnewsletters/entry320.aspx

Signboards Promoting Education Awareness are Installed in Phoum Stung

2009-07-18T01:53:00Z

Two recently installed signboards are attracting attention in Phoum Stung community. The signboards are part of the 2009 Phoum Stung Primary School development plan, which aims to increase the value that parents put on education.

In a series of eight images, the boards tell the story of two children – a girl and a boy – from a poor family who are not enrolled in school. In a village meeting, the children's parents are encouraged to register their son and daughter for school. The students progress through grade 12 and find employment, improving the standard of living for themselves and their family. (http://www.schools4cambodia.org/blogs/news/archive/2009/06/10/phoum-stung-school-support-committee-designs-signboard-to-promote-education-awareness.aspx)

After overseeing installation of the signboards early this week, the Phoum Stung School Support Committee held an assembly with students on Thursday, using the boards to promote the importance of education. The Assistant School Director explained the images to students. Subsequently, a prominent member of the community, and the students' life skills class teacher, discussed the importance of protecting the signboards. The Assistant Village Chief closed the assembly, urging students to return to class at the start of the next academic year, in October.

The signboards will also be used to promote education awareness to parents and other community members. A village meeting is tentatively planned in September, just before the start of school registration.

The signboards complement other 2009 initiatives by the Phoum Stung School Support Committee – including school-community meetings and a life skills class – designed to increase the value that parents and students place on education. There are signs that their efforts are paying off. In fact, in the 2008-09 academic year, only 2 students, of 494, (0.4%) dropped-out of school!

The Phoum Stung Assistant Village Chief explains each image to students:

The Life Skills Community Volunteer Teacher talks about the importance of protecting the signboards:

The Assistant Village Chief urges children to return to school in October:

Wat Mon Thyean School Support Committee Recognises Donors for New Classrooms

2009-07-18T01:41:00Z

Names of the donors who contributed funds and labour to the construction of Wat Mon Thyean's new classrooms and toilets are now prominently displayed on the front of the school building. The sign was designed by the School Support Committee to express their appreciation for contributions made by SCC, including a significant contribution from an SCC donor in memory of Anthony P. Ceranich, and residents of the Wat Mon Thyean community.

Thank you to all SCC donors and Wat Mon Thyean community members who made the construction project a success!

A School Support Committee member admires the work in progress.

Community Volunteer Teaches Students to Grow Mango Trees

2009-07-11T00:14:00Z

Grade 5 and 6 students at Phoum Stung Primary School have had a very special opportunity the past 6 months. Through hands-on classes taught by a community volunteer, students have learned how to plant and care for mango trees, a skill that is important to livelihoods in their village. As part of the SCC-supported life skills class, students have planted 20 trees, 10 of them on school grounds and 10 more in their community.

Nearly 40 students convened for the last practical class of the year, on 3 July. Accompanied by their classroom teacher, students trekked one kilometer to the home of Mr. Soum, a community volunteer teacher and dedicated member of the School Support Committee. In the final lesson of the year, Mr. Soum taught students about grafting and cutting/cloning as means for propagation. Students had the opportunity to practice what they learned in Mr. Soum's garden.

The mango-tree growing class is an initiative of the Phoum Stung School Support Committee. It is designed to provide students with practical skills that they can use to contribute to the livelihood of their families. In doing so, the School Support Committee hopes that the class will also lead to parents' increased appreciation for education.

SCC contributed 7 buckets and 10 mango trees to this project.

Students at Phoum Stung School Learn to Prevent Dengue Fever

2009-07-11T00:10:00Z

In 2007 alone, nearly 40,000 cases of dengue fever were reported in Cambodia, taking the lives of 407 people, many of them children.¹ Dengue fever, caused by a mosquito-transmitted virus, manifests as a sudden onset of severe headache, muscle and joint pains, fever and rash. There is no vaccine for dengue fever, so the best way to combat the virus is to control the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes. In a country where nearly every household has large, uncovered water storages tanks and flood plains are vast, this is no easy task!

On 1 July, Grade 6 students at Phoum Stung Primary School took part in a special 2-hour lesson, learning signs and symptoms of dengue fever as well as means of prevention. The lesson was taught by the village health representative, who has been engaged in other health education activities at the school since her initial involvement with the Phoum Stung School Support Committee at the January 2009 SCC-facilitated school development plan workshop. The village health representative commented that school-based activities are one of the most efficient ways to promote awareness about community health concerns. “Educate a student, and you also educate their parents, siblings and friends.”

¹IRIN Asia

Teachers Receive One-on-One Coaching Following Classroom Observations

2009-06-10T11:52:00Z

In Feburary and March, SCC, in collaboration with the Siem Reap Provincial Teacher Training College (PTTC), provided training on teaching methodology and classroom management to over 40 primary school teachers. In late May and early June, teachers at Wat Mon Thyean and Phoum Stung Primary Schools had the opportunity to showcase what they learned. SCC's Program Officer, Jay, joined the training facilitator from PTTC, in unannounced visits to the schools to observe teachers' classes and provide feedback and further one-on-one coaching.

Some teachers showed that they were putting their new knowledge to practice. A teacher at Phoum Stung, for example, had learned to use creativity to overcome challenges associated with under-resourced classrooms. She and students had collected leaves which they used as counters to practice simple addition and subtraction. Teachers also showed improved interactions with students by moving throughout the classroom, instead of standing in one place or sitting at their desks at the front of the rooms.

Learning to be an effective teacher is an ongoing process. The PTTC facilitator offered coaching on the use of questions to further engage students, the introduction of new subject material in a way that relates to concepts that students already understand, and improved communication with and reporting to the school director.

School directors played an important role in observing the teachers, too, as they were trained to conduct evaluations and give feedback their staff, something that very rarely happens at the average school!

Phoum Stung School Support Committee Designs Signboard to Promote Education Awareness

2009-06-10T04:00:00Z

Since Feburary 2009, the School Support Committee at Phoum Stung Primary School and SCC have been working with Our Books, a non-profit dedicated to the development of comic art in Cambodia, to design a series of images that promote the value of education.

The images, shown below, tell the story of children from a poor family whose parents attend a meeting at the local primary school and are encouraged to enrol their children in school. The decision to send their children to school, along with encouragement to study hard at home, results in the students' completing secondary school, finding jobs and securing better lives for themselves and their family.

Now that the images are complete, the production of two 2 x 2.5 meter signboards, which will display the images, are underway. Ultimately, the signboards will be installed in high-traffic areas of the community and unveiled in a community meeting. Stay tuned for further updates!

Seventy Wat Mon Thyean Community Members Gather at a School Meeting

2009-06-10T03:40:00Z

On Thursday, 28 May, 70 community members gathered in the new Wat Mon Thyean classrooms for the second of two meetings organized by the School Support Committee to improve school-community communication and to promote the value of education.

Followed by a greeting from the School Director, the Wat Mon Thyean teachers presented some of their greatest challenges, including parents' pulling their children out of class to attend weddings and other village festivals. Teachers explained that repeatedly missing days of class can hinder children's learning and encouraged parents to send their students to school everyday.

A member of the School Support Committee showed the resources that were purchased using contributions from the community and SCC and delivered to the school several months ago. The new materials – including textbooks, posters, globes, rulers, scissors, etc – are helping to address the school's lack of teaching and learning resources.

The School Support Committee also discussed the recently-initiated agriculture classes for grade 3-6 students and the morning breakfasts supported by the World Food Program.

By far, the biggest highlight of the meeting was the attendance of 10 parents from a migrant community nearby the school. Students living in this neighborhood stay for only six months of the year, after which they follow their parents to Kampong Cham where they get seasonal work. The moving back and forth no doubt has serious implications for the students' education. Until now, the school had very limited communication with these migrant workers, so their representation at the school meeting was considered a big success.

Parents start to gather for the meeting. Note the well-docorated walls! Some are teaching resources handmade by teachers, while others are materials supported by SCC and the Wat Mon Thyean community.

School Support Committee members and teachers assemble for the meeting:

A crowded classroom! The School Support Committee was successful in getting 20 more parents at this meeting than the first, in Feburary.

Some Schools Opt to Transition to SCC's Primary School Development Programme as Teacher Sponsorship Ends

2009-04-14T02:29:00Z

In the final phase of SCC's School Adoption Programme, teacher sponsorship was phased out in February 2009 and replaced by SCC's Primary School Development Programme (PSDP). This is a more sustainable approach to improving access to and quality of education and is based on involving community members in the running their schools and the education of their children. We recognize that each community has unique needs, so the support provided will also vary, but may include teacher and director training, the provision of teaching and learning resources, classroom construction, and support for education awareness events.

Each of SCC's formerly 'adopted' schools was given the opportunity of continued PSDP support from SCC which included training and resources, but not the payment of teacher salary supplements. This is a big policy change and subsequent discussions with each school and community have resulted in mutually agreed and local decisions about how best to adapt and work the SCC into the future.

The Phoum Stung Primary School staff and community members have embraced the PSDP and are working toward implementation of their 2009 development plan. They have held village meetings promoting education awareness to parents, raised $25 to contribute to over $500 worth of new teaching and learning resources that are now in use, and designed a billboard that promotes the value of education, to be installed in high-traffic areas of their village.

Teachers at Svay Dungkum Primary School were also very interested in the benefits that PSDP offers to their school, but need to supplement their low salaries so are testing a school donation box into which community members can make optional and voluntary contributions to the teachers. The anonymity of a donation box takes away the need for students to pay their teacher each day, which could impact poor students' access to education. SCC is providing technical support to monitor the new solution for a period of three months, after which we will, together with teachers and the community, evaluate its success and make a mutual decision on the way forward.

Khnar Primary School is like Svay Dungkum in that it is near to Siem Reap town, where the cost of living is relatively high. Here, too, teachers and community members have agreed on a solution that works best for them, and students will pay teachers for lessons on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, this is inconsistent with the values of SCC, and so all parties have agreed, amicably, to SCC's withdrawal from the school. The Khnar school director, teachers and community members have expressed their sincere thanks to SCC and SCC donors for building classrooms, stocking a library, bringing electricity to the school, and for other infrastructure improvements and training opportunities since SCC started to work with the school in 2006.

At Wat Mon Thyean School, the impact of the teacher and community members' decision to receive continued support under PSDP is already evident. The School Support Committee, a group of eight community members and the school director, is far more active than they were before. They have led meetings in their village to promote the value of education, conducted home visits for students who have irregular school attendance and most recently, started a basic agriculture class to teach students skills that are relevant to life in their village.

Stay tuned to these web blogs to learn more about developments at Phoum Stung and Wat Mon Thyean as implementation of their 2009 school development plans continue through July 2009.

Community Volunteers are Trained to Mentor Sponsored Students

2009-04-13T06:00:00Z

Community volunteers are now well on their way to becoming mentors for SCC's sponsored students! The three eager volunteers -- Pon Poon, Saleoun, and Sinkosal -- all gathered Wednesday, April 1, for a morning training session at the Son Thai Village Chief's home in rural Siem Reap.

The morning started with an ice breaker to allow the volunteers - who come from three different villages - to get to know each other. Andrea, SCC's General Manager, initiated the training with an introduction to SCC, familiarizing the mentors with our work. Then, Thida, SCC's Programme Officer, trained the volunteers on the mechanics of the Student Sponsorship Program and their integral roles, as student mentors. An energetic and entertaining role-play session between Andrea and Thida helped volunteers understand the do's and don'ts of effective mentoring.

The volunteers also had opportunities to share their educational experiences, particularly the challenges they faced and how they could use their experiences to mentor their students. Pon Poon, age 29, recounted how terribly far school was from his home. A tear came to his eye as he talked about the nights he had to sleep in the rice fields because the roads were too bad for him to make it home before dark.

Thida concluded the session, urging volunteers to reach out to her with questions and problems as they start to work with sponsored students. We hope that the mentor program will not only benefit the students, but also help develop these enthusiastic volunteers to become leaders in their communities.

Photo: Community volunteers Kosal, Poon, and Salouen stand with SCC's Programme Officer, Thida, following the mentor training:

Teacher Training Workshop is a Success

2009-03-23T05:53:00Z

Students were not in class March 9, 2009 in observance of International Women's Day; however, that did not stop over 40 teachers sitting in local classrooms to participate in the final day of SCC-supported teacher training. The last training sessions took place at Khnar and Phoum Stung Schools.

Teachers came from the four SCC-supported, government-run primary schools, including Svay Dungkum, Khnar, Phoum Stung and Wat Mon Thyean Schools. The training facilitators, normally instructors at the Provincial Teacher Training College and Siem Reap District Office of Education, delivered over 5 hours of dynamic presentations about teaching methodology and classroom management. This was the last of four sessions, spread between Feburary and March.

Schools for Children of Cambodia, in partnership with the Siem Reap Provincial Teacher Training College, will monitor teachers' implementation of what they learned through school visits and classroom observation, starting in May. The follow-up will not only help us with evaluation of this teacher training programme, but it will also help us identify needs for future training.

Merry Mentors!

2009-03-18T09:08:00Z

SCC's Programme Officer, Thida, has been working tirelessly to select a great bunch of volunteer mentors for 21 Dom Dek Secondary School students supported under our Student Sponsorship Programme. This week the final selections were made and we now have an enthusiastic and committed team of community volunteers who live and work in the villages where sponsored students reside.

Mentor recruitment started in early February when Thida met with eight former students - the only former secondary school student in the villages of T'Nong, Roun Kang Thbong, and Son Thai - to advertise the need. Out of the eight young adults, four candidates applied. And, of the four who applied, three were chosen. They include two men and one woman, all local Khmers who have completed their secondary education despite a range of obstacles they faced while studying. Thida interviewed each applicant with a rigorous set of questions and was searching for people who genuinely “wanted to help the younger generation;” all of the chosen applicants expressed this interest during their interviews.

The three community-based mentors will be responsible for checking in with sponsored students living in their village. Through regular home visits, mentors will follow-up on students' school performance, attendance and family situations. They will offer encouragement, provide advice, and refer students to special services as needed. Thida will have regular communication with each of the mentors and will support them to support the students.

Before any work gets started though, Thida will facilitate training sessions for the newly recruited mentors, introducing them to SCC, the Student Sponsorship Programme, their roles and responsibilities, best practices, and ultimately, the students.

By actively engaging community members in the mentoring of sponsorship students, we aim to promote the value of education to those both directly and indirectly supported by the Sponsorship Programme.

As we move forward with implementation of the community-based mentor programme, we will continue to keep you informed. Keep an eye out for new posts!

Protractors and Globes and Textbooks, Oh My!

2009-03-09T11:22:00Z

Cambodia's classrooms are generally under-resourced. Cabinets or shelves -- if they exist -- are empty, walls are bare, and in most cases there are insufficient textbooks to accommodate all students.

In a Valuing Teachers survey conducted by Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) and NGO Education Partnership (NEP), 76% of responding teachers found the lack of teaching and learning materials an obstacle to their work, and 63% named this as a de-motivating factor (http://www.schools4cambodia.org/files/folders/schooldevelopment/entry282.aspx). There's no doubt that a lack of resources impacts the quality of education received by students.

Under SCC's Primary School Development Programme, we partner with communities to provide much-needed materials to teachers and students. At the beginning of the 2008-09 school year, teachers at both Phuom Stung and Wat Mon Thyean Primary Schools took inventory of their schools' resources and identified their needs. Based on the assessments, SCC has been working with school support committees to coordinate the provision of the much-needed, one-off resources to each school. Organized by the school support committees, the communities served by Phoum Stung and Wat Mon Thyean have made direct contributions to resourcing their schools. For example, the Phuom Stung teachers have hand-made some posters and flashcards, and community members pulled together US$25 to contribute to the purchase of other supplies. Considering a typical teacher’s salary is between US$30 and $60 per month, this is quite a bit of money for a community to contribute. Wat Mon Thyean also raised an impressive US$25, and the school donated an extra US$5 to the project. It is encouraging to see the communities and schools take such an active interest in the education of their children!

With SCC's contribution of an additional US$1,245, a range of materials - including globes, posters, maps, protractors, and photocopied textbooks - were purchased for the schools. Last week, SCC Programme Officer, Jay, made trips to Phoum Stung and Wat Mon Thyean to deliver the resources. Excitement was at record levels! For school support committee members, especially, it was the first time they had seen such materials. The resources were checked for quality and quantity by the committees, and then handed over to teachers to organize and put to good use. The school support committee and SCC will work together to monitor the schools' use of the new materials.

We hope that with this contribution of resources, teachers will be in a better position to provide quality education to their students.

Parents' Value of Education Will Grow Alongside Morning Glory

2009-03-09T10:50:00Z

During the last weeks of February, Wat Mon Thyean Primary School students were seen hauling bamboo shoots to school, just after the roosters started their morning crowing. The bamboo is the community's contribution to the construction of a fence that protects the school's new garden, where fourth and fifth grade students are learning basic agriculture skills.

As identified by the Wat Mon Thyean community, parents in the area tend not to place value on education, contributing to students' low school attendance rates. Parents, many of whom are uneducated themselves, don't necessarily see value or relevancy in the standard national curriculum.

Per the community-driven school development plan, SCC is supporting the Wat Mon Thyean school support committee and teachers to initiate a life skills class, which makes education relevant to life in Kok Russey Kang Cherng village, the community served by Wat Mon Thyean School. In the class, grade 4 and 5 students are learning to grow morning glory, a green stalky vegetable.

SCC has provided 10 truckloads of soil (shown below), seeds, watering cans, buckets and nails (for the fence) -- a US$67 value -- to support the start of the class.

The first crop of morning glory has already been planted and can now be seen growing in four nice, neat rows in the school yard. After the morning glory has been harvested by the students, it will supplement canned fish and rice (supported by the World Food Programme) to provide well-balanced breakfasts to students through the school's feeding programme.

Ultimately, the school support committee intends to help students start morning glory gardens at home, where parents can see first-hand the very valuable skills that their children are learning at school.

Stay tuned for more news on the class, students, and crops!