Youth interested more in Education

Our organization, Village Earth Cambodia, has opened our new school called Youth School in the train track area in October 2009 to empowering youth in that area. In the first month we opened the school, we started with only three classes: one in the morning, afternoon and evening, each with 20 to 25 students. Last month, sometime in November, we separated this into five classes because more students were interested in education and began to attend.

Because the number of students have increased, we are planning to open up a new class in Jan 2010 by separating the evening class to two classes. We are so excited about this because we can see that the youth are starting to understand the importance of education in their lives. We really need support from the government and also from other people to encourage and give opportunities to the young generation to really participate in the growth of the country in order to reduce poverty in Cambodia.

10 Children Given the Opportunity to Start School

We, Village Earth Cambodia, recently have opened a new school in Beong Kak area called Beong Kak Youth School. Our purpose of opening this school is to develop human resources in the community by providing English classes, dancing lessons, dental care for little children, and a medical clinic....

Many students come to register because it is free of charge for them. Our staff and teachers who are working in Youth School found out that some of those children do not go to school because they don’t have money. We are so concerned about their future and their family’s future if they don't go to school.

Some of them live with a widow mother and some of them have moved from a province and they don’t have any money to transfer from their province school to the city school. Our staff and teachers in Youth School worked very hard to get these kids into public school.

Finally, we got 10 kids to go to school. In order to keep them in school, we have to support them constantly so they will not be chased out from school. In Cambodia, because the government pays a very low salary to teachers, the schools have to collect money from students every day to support the teachers' sustainability.

We also have provided each of the students with some money to pay their teachers, as well as some school materials such as books, pens, pencils, writing boards, uniforms, and bags. They were so excited and grateful for a chance to go back to school.