CAMBODIA: Learning platform

via CAAI News Media

20 Apr 2010 08:49:00 GMT

Source: MAG (Mines Advisory Group)

Website: http://www.maginternational.org/

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Previous | Next Students play in front of the new school building, constructed on land that had been cleared by MAG.

Nicolas Axelrod / MAG

Until March 2008, Veal village school in Pursat province had no proper building - because nobody dared to build one. There had been accidents involving landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) in the village, and community members suspected there must be more in the ground.

The school director, Meak Hun, got on with his job as best he could, but says: "Teaching was extremely difficult. I had to teach students under villagers' houses."

Eleven-year-old Buor Seiha recalls what those lessons were like: "Each time it rained, we almost got soaked. We didn't have chairs and tables. I had to put my chalkboard on the mat and crouch over it as I wrote."

One of MAG Cambodia's all-female teams came to the village in July 2007. It took more than six weeks to clear the land needed for the school. During the process, six items of UXO were found and destroyed.

Once the land was safe, a school was built with the support of two international non-governmental organisations, Sustainable Cambodia and Save the Children Norway.

Today, about 300 students attend classes there, a notable change from the way things were.

"The number of students [before the school was built] was only around 30 to 40, as the learning environment was not good," says Meak Hun. "Students faced a lot of hardship. Many students went fishing, cutting wood or picking bamboo shoots instead of coming to classes."

The local authorities and parents now cooperate to make sure that all children are now sent to school.

Another student, Phan Hoeurm, is happy to have the opportunity to study in a proper classroom. She says, simply: "Now we have a good school."

For more information on MAG's Cambodia programme please go to www.maginternational.org/cambodia.

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MAG thanks the following donor for funding the work mentioned in this article: Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, US Department of State.

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]