Back in December, I visited four villages in Kep and Takeo province to check out locations for new community preschools. When our team got back, we finalized
locations based on feedback from the community leaders and the number of kids
in each area. Last week, we went back to these locations and saw the final
phases of construction for each school. I could not believe it.
Today was the first day of school! 100 kids will now be able
to start preschool in their communities for free. Parents will not have to
worry about transportation, materials or school fees. I am still in awe of how
quickly and efficiently we were able to pull this off. I can’t begin to
describe how excited I am about this. This is why I am came here. It is so
rewarding to see this project come to life .
We have two more in the pipeline and will continue to expand
if we have the support of new communities and resources to help fund the
construction. You might be thinking how can this be sustainable. Well, one of
the things I love about Aide et Action is that we don’t come in and try to be
the heroes. Instead, we speak to commune and village leaders about their needs.
We then come up with a plan of action where they are just as much of a
stakeholder as us. They need to get community support, they need to find a
teacher, they need to find volunteers to build it and they need to allocate a
small portion of their annual budget for education. Once they accomplish these
tasks, we help them with teacher training, parent workshops, we provide school supplies and we pay for the construction materials. The school is always called a community preschool, not
an Aide et Action school. This helps the community leader in getting support
for their citizen and it shows the citizens that they are part of the process.
The goal is to make education a primary and necessary
component of every child’s life. If we can convince each parent of this through
our preschools then they will continue to advocate for new schools with their
local governments and the local governments will push the agenda with the
national government and so on.
We are relying on the power of education. It’s ability to
empower people because it is a fundamental precondition for economic, social
and political development.
<3
ReplyDelete