News Detail
Title: June 2010 news
Report visit Chances4cambodia Phnom Penh 2 June 2010.
2 June 2010, Wednesday.
I arrived at 5 pm and was picked up by Steve, we dropped the luggage at the hotel and we started with our first meeting with a new English teacher from England, Miss Rosie Randell, arranged by Projects Abroad.
Over diner we introduced C4A/C4C, explaining details about our first educational project for university students, and gave her the best situation description we could about the English knowledge our students presently have.
Miss Rosie occurred to be a very qualified and experienced English teacher at the moment very motivated to share her knowledge with our two students groups and to teach university students at Mr. Kong’s dorm from our highly respected volunteer advisor Mr. Kong’s high school in Prey Veng. We agreed to introduce the students to her at both universities on Friday starting at the National University of Management at 11 am, but first tomorrow accompany her to the high school 150 km out of Phnom Penh on her wish to complete her picture about where our students are coming from.
Steve and I continued a private conversation to update each other recent developments at C4A and C4C.
Items discussed were:
New policy for fundraising to allow donators to pay in installments after signing for the whole sum to pay in an agreed period. Steve fear to possible end up with students half way because a donator cannot or refuses to comply with the agreement, though a contract is suppose to cover guaranteed payment other than when a donator goes bankrupt. In this structure there is no advanced paid fund kept on the bank so the expected sum of interest to cover further admin. costs we will miss out on, but all these setbacks and inflation, doubling a year for a student and other possible calamities might threatening a fund stream is justifiably to be covered in a separate reserved sum added to a total donation openly presented up beforehand to the donator and not refundable after the reserved sum appears not to be needed for the supported first student.
Steve reported on ITC University where they offer a 3 and 5 year course for Food Technology and Chemical Engineering, last year 22 students from 28 found a well paid job after graduating, while 4 students chose to attend a follow up course. Women are especially treated with a third of the school fee only being levied; we believe this is the perfect opportunity for a proposal to present to Heinz as we were searching for such an assignment of the board.
Present obstacles in progress to our students are discussed. So the girls from the Business study group are not living together since their room was closed for renovations and now all 4 are living apart with family and friends nearby the university which results in less group activities as studying together and helping each other. The Agriculture study group is anxiously waiting for the promised donation from Miss Sue to get better computers handling their land mapping programs desperately needed to continue their study. Semester results are still hard to get from the university administrations without payments. Students appear easily to have a job if they can find one aside from their study. Steve will suggest to their Dean that the 5 of the Agriculture guys provide a taskforce as a security guard on the campus since he has been given information there is a serious need for more security.
In the Netherlands we suffer lack of time and labor to have projects completed though now we have contracted a fundraiser company there is more hope to expand the project and our ideas. PayPal is very much needed because of possible liability breach when it is not working on the website and Steve does not like to start fundraising activities in the local market until this is completed. Here we are missing out on a huge opportunity since plenty of international NGO’s have similar goals as C4C and are ready to assist us with sharing network, materials and funds. Hopefully PayPal is attached to the website when Steve attends a Development Cambodia Program seminar organized by the Australian and New Zealand governments for great networking opportunities. After all hundreds of contacts are waiting to be followed up with.
3 June 2010 Thursday.
I hired a tuk tuk at 4.30am to meet at Steve’s house where at 5am Miss Rosie and Miss Kristi the American Student Volunteer teacher of the NUM.students who has just finished teaching the Business study group daily for a month now had to wait for Mr. Kong to pick us up and take us to his school at Prey Veng.
It took three hours over bumpy roads but finally we arrived there where we met up with Mr. Norman, a highly skilled teacher from America placed there with the cooperation of C4C by the Us Peace Corps who is now upgrading the skills of the English teachers there plus the students as well to prepare them for further studies in Phnom Penh after graduating from high school.
All of us did a motivational talk to a group of more than 100 students and staff in a meeting with final year students and teachers; this seemed to be very up building to them and inspiring to us.
We had lunch after the meeting and left at 13.30pm to arrive at Steve’s place at 5pm.
Over and after diner I had a meeting with Steve about future activities for C4C and C4A discussing the following matters:
We need to develop a base for a grand proposal to organize study funds for women students on ITC University generally in two parts, one for the students study and one to create a housing project as a dorm on the campus as an additional to the first. Most likely assisted by the ministry of Education Youth and Sport Steve sees the possibility to get cooperation from ITC to build a dormitory on the campus lot with a 100 year lease or so to accommodate a large number of C4C female students. 3 year students in a budget of 2500 euro and 5 year for 3500 euro in our same study fund concept in where there is a budget enclosed for housing. With an approximately 100.000 euro building fund to create the dorm we can also start a housing project because each student can add their monthly housing into a housing fund while living in this dorm until there is enough finance for a new building. If we include a bank we may create an everlasting and expanding housing project for students.
Mr. Kong desires to expand his classrooms as we have seen that sometimes there are more than 60 scholars in a class. The school has the best results in the province, is fully sponsored by many Japanese NGO’s but do not provide in creating more classrooms while the school does attract more children each year with high capabilities though too poor to afford any education. We decided to be prepared for any opportunity arranging any fund for an additional building on the lot there while we are looking for any funds for our students.
We concluded that arranging an English teacher through the US Peace Corps did uplift the school tremendously and the effect will be there for a long time after the period of 2 years will be over. It will certainly benefit our future students coming from this school now they will be better prepared coming to Phnom Penh Universities
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4 June 2010 Friday.
Steve met me just before 11 o clock at my hotel to go to the National University of Management so that we could introduce Miss Rosie as the new English teacher just after 11am.
The university has allocated the use of an air conditioned classroom for this purpose as before. Of course all 4 of our study group were there and Miss Rosie was very skillful to find out that she was most needed on pronunciation and conversation and she also could continue where Miss Kristi had stopped on grammar.
At 12 noon I had my chance with my beloved students. Seeing them coming out more with more confidence and more capable to conversation, made me proud by itself. Coming into their actual difficulties we discussed the need of a room where all the girls can stay again and Bona can visit them for home study to improve the weakened situation that each can assist and encourage the other on areas of their study they may have struggles with. Now everybody stays with family and friends temporally we agreed that they will need an extra effort to help each other before/after class, because all agreed this is not happening lately. While talking it appeared the students are not able to get their semester results by themselves in a report from the university. So Steve promised to make arrangements with the Dean about this. 1 computer had problems but again not accurate to mention this to Steve. They promised better and overcome shyness to this matter. Now only Channy does not have a part time job but would like it as well. Steve promised to look out for one as he found an English-teacher’s job for Sokheng. But also the rest of the group promised to look more intensively for her, so she also can make some additional much needed money. So now we that we had covered all the serious matters we thought it a good idea for the bonding of the group as a C4A/C4C organization to treat the 4 of them to lunch at the campus food café. Miss Rosie had left for a break and she would find her way to the Agriculture-students a bit out of town. We all enjoyed the pleasant time and they gave me more and more the feeling they know better where our organization is all about and are going to assist us making it stronger and bigger.
At 4pm we were at the Royal University of Agriculture and we gathered with our 6 students attending the Land Management course there. We were very happy to see each other and proceeded to arrange a basic but efficient classroom. While waiting for Miss Rosie, I used this opportunity to exercise some conversation with them and in the meantime discuss with them their worries and proceedings at school. It is also difficult for them to get their semester results in a report so Steve will investigate this again too. We discussed about an idea to propose that 5 of the guys could do part time security work on the campus in trade for their monthly room fee (.../person/month) now we have heard there is a need for this. Steve promised to talk with the dean about this while he will make an agreement about the semester reports. Miss Rosie was sent in the wrong direction at the university but arrived at 16.30 to start immediately an hour session where she found out their English is not as good as the first group. As an experienced teacher she made a plan to adapt this into her overall plan also to give our students more strength in conversation.
After this Miss Rosie had to find the dorm of the students of Mr. Kong, but we worried a bit so we followed her a half hour later while I had some final chitchat with the group. Still arriving first after a few phone calls her tuk tuk brought her to the group also hungry for some extra English.
Steve and I went back to town for diner and an evaluation of the day. We came to conclusions as a new senior student must be found for the agriculture guys capable to teach them some more English. Their standard is low because of a two month layoff of not having a teacher but even more because of the environment in the university, where there is no extra teaching and speaking or any encouragement to speak English. Only their books are English and they have an hour a week of English at college, the rest of the lessons are in Khmer, so a lot different to NUM. Steve wants to install new programs teaching them English but now promised by Miss Rosie to send after she has returned about one month in England. Once they get going on these programs we have to organize monthly tests following an agreed schedule through the program to keep them stimulating doing self study.
Steve is going to contact the deans of both universities to get the semester results and at the agri university he will plea for the guys will perform together 1 job as an security guard at the gate of the campus during evening and night in following shifts to the reward of no more payments for their dorm. Now they are also living there and a bit out of the city their chances for a job are very limited.
We discussed about our financial situation in Cambodia and the Netherlands and concluded that at the moment we can support the students until September and barely can pay the next half year school fee and there is no sight at a donation until January. Though a new limited loan input from me is always the last option available we urged ourselves to focus on small donations most likely from local operating NGO’s and organizations in Phnom Penh but also I have to discuss short term small donation targets with our fundraiser company in the Netherlands.
5 June 2010, Saturday.
This day was supposed to be a free day but we ended up hours behind computer writing, partly this report but also go over the whole website from Chances4cambodia again to see together where Steve’s difficulties were to make the pages as how they are now and to see where we can improve lay out, style and texts.
6 June 2010, Sunday.
Though this is my day of departure there was a meeting scheduled with all students at the residence of Mr. Kong. This because for one reason the students regularly pointed out the wish to see me more but also because we had to discuss some C4C items, they wanted to show some map design work on a special program on their computer, we had to look at some malfunctions in the girls computer, we of course had to speak some encouragement to them and of course this was another opportunity to practice verbal English.
Miss Rosie wanted to attend to get more ideas from the students former and present situation and she certainly was a great assistance to make this meeting very joyful and fruitful.
In the afternoon I left the country but not before Steve and I had expressed our highly motivated intentions to each other to lift up the project to a higher level.
