Education Cambodia Project #34415

Give Cambodian Children an Education

by Indochina Starfish Foundation

Project Report | Jul 14, 2020
Overcoming adversity thanks to your support!

By Meg Davies | Senior Development Officer

The outbreak of Covid-19 has had a profound impact across the world, and we hope you are keeping safe and well during these difficult times. Sadly, for our 728 students and their families, the pandemic has hit them particularly hard.

School closures has caused further disruption to the education of our students and the closing of countless businesses and factories has forced many families further into poverty; 90% have lost over half of their earnings, with almost a third losing all sources of income. Struggling to pay rent or buy sufficient food, ISF students are under increased pressure to drop out and seek informal – often dangerous - employment to support their families.

Thanks to the support of people like you, ISF has been able to innovatively respond to these challenges to ensure we can continue offering our holistic support. This includes:

Online and take-home lessons with tablets and top-up data for students who need it.
Monthly food parcels and hygiene supplies to 555 families and additional parcels and meals available to those experiencing extreme financial hardship.
Continued access to free healthcare and medical support at our ISF facilities.
Career counselling for students and parents to help with employment opportunities
Advocating for reduced rental fees or deferments with 121 local landlords.
Encouraging children to stay active at home with home exercise videos and virtual football coaching sessions.

With schools expected to be closed until November, our students have taken this new way of remote learning in their stride. This is certainly the case for 16-year-old student Panha.

Due to fears over the virus spreading in Phnom Penh and work having dried up, Panha’s parents uprooted the family hundreds of miles to stay with relatives in Prey Veng, one of Cambodia’s leading agricultural provinces. Regardless of this, Panha has been one of our most devoted students while schools have been shut.

Panha explains “I care about my education very much, especially English. I think English is very important for Cambodian kids because it can really help our studies. We can also make new friends around the world and maybe even study abroad. It can help us to make our country better.”

As a result, he has been an enthusiastic and reliable participant in Zoom lessons with his teacher Josh. He manages to fit this in even though he is now expected to work on his family’s farm. Despite helping with ploughing, looking after animals, and growing vegetables, Panha has continued to participate in all ISF’s online English lessons.

Panha is even going the extra mile, taking the opportunity to set up an English school to share his knowledge of learning English with local children.

"The funny thing is I don’t really like kids that much! So, I’m not sure why I did it! But I’m glad I did. I’m really grateful to ISF and to my teachers for supporting me, so it’s good for me to support others."

His decision to teach the local children came when he realised that their English was lagging far behind their Khmer. The province of Prey Veng is one of the country’s poorest. So Panha wasn’t surprised to learn that nobody could afford extra English lessons. Having already helped teacher Josh with some teaching at ISF, he decided he would start offering free classes.

“It wasn’t hard to get the children to take part at all,” Panha explains. “I use an ‘English For Children’ textbook to teach them, and also the knowledge I learnt from Josh. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun, especially when we play games. I think if they can learn English it will be much better for them in the long run.”

In the future Panha would like to work as a businessman and a farmer, all while helping Cambodia develop further. We believe that if he is already showing so much initiative, drive, and ability to cope with adversity now, there’s nothing he won’t be able to do later. We can’t wait to have students like him back in our classrooms, giving us hope for the future.

The importance of your support

Responding to the emerging challenges and needs of our students and their families has only been possible with your generosity to ISF. Thank you for helping us to continue providing a necessary safety net to those experiencing food and income insecurity in these challenging times.

The coronavirus outbreak is however having a huge financial impact on us and we are currently operating with fast-depleting resources. This limited funding has forced us to make some difficult decisions including unfortunately not being able to take any new students in our Catch-up Programme for the new academic year. We urgently need new funding if we are to provide our services both in the current crisis and into the future.

If you are able to make another donation to ISF it would be very much appreciated. As part of their Bonus Day, GlobalGiving are also matching all donations between $100-$1,000 on 15th July meaning any support you can give will have even more of an impact. Please do also consider asking your friends and family to get involved so we can continue our vital support that your generosity makes possible. We appreciate this is not a small sum of money and so I would note that any donation you are able to give would be greatly appreciated.

Your ongoing support to ISF will ensure we can continue making a difference to some of the most underserved children in Phnom Penh so they can build a brighter future for themselves and their families.

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Mar 18, 2020
Do You Know How Much Good You've Done?

By Margherita Chiarolanza | Development Manager

We have many reasons to celebrate this month. Our holistic Education Programme aims to help disadvantaged and marginalised children with little-to-no-education escape poverty. We do this with a combination of no-cost accelerated learning programme to get them re-integrated into Cambodia’s public-school system quickly, healthcare, and nutritional support. Our community outreach projects help their families develop the skills they need to gain employment. When students graduate from our Catch-Up Programme, they continue to receive support from ISF throughout their educational journey.

See some of the highlights below:

84 new students were accepted into our Catch-Up Programme in November, bringing our total students to 728
80 students graduated our accelerated learning ‘catch up’ programme and were re-integrated into state school. We now support 443 students to complete state school education
13 students are receiving ISF support in tertiary education
47% of our student body are female
29 students have found stable employment and have graduated from all our programmes

On a different note, in accordance with a safety measure from Cambodia’s Ministry of Education, ISF schools will be closing until further notice to prevent any possible spread of the COVID-19 virus. We have no students or staff exhibiting symptoms of or have tested positive for the illness.

Our staff have been meeting with students' families to notify them of this closure and give them information about our services going forward. They will keep these families informed through regular home visits, phone calls and a dedicated Facebook Group. Soap will also be distributed throughout the community to promote preventative hygiene and informational material given to educate residents on the virus and its prevention. Our commitment to our students and their families remains paramount in the days and weeks to follow.

The Importance of Our Support

Crises like the Coronavirus outbreak underscore the necessity of our healthcare, community projects, and education services to Cambodia’s most vulnerable children and their families. We need your support to maintain these projects that provide a necessary safety net for those experiencing food and income insecurity and help lift them out of poverty. If you can, make a donation to our life-changing programmes.

We appreciate your support as we continue to extend relief to some of Phnom Penh’s most unprotected residents.

Thank you!

The ISF Team

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Dec 23, 2019
700 children wish you happy holidays!

By Sokyou | ISF Development Officer

Heng, who's on the road to success

It's been an incredible year and we owe it all to you! Thanks to your continued support, we've been able to accept 84 marginalised children into our accelerated learning catch-up programme, bringing our total number of catch-up students to 218. Of these 84 new students, aged 8-11, 44% had never had the chance to go to school before and therefore joined our grade 1 classes. All our students are receiving 2 school meals per day, six days a week, healthcare and vaccinations as well as access to safe play spaces. To ensure they stay in school, their families also receive nutritional support and the opportunity to enroll in skills and vocational training through ISF's community projects.

This academic year 2019/2020, we are also supporting a total of 438 students to study at state schools. Nine students who graduated from grade 9 in August 2019 have won a 50% scholarship to study at the Academy of Careers and Technology (ACT), an accredited general technical high school for grade 7-12. The school allows students to study a combination of general education with technical skills of their choice towards earning high school diplomas.

Furthermore, we currently support 14 students in tertiary education as well as 57 youth in our employment project. One of these students is Heng*. This recent state school graduate started with ISF in grade 5 and we’ve had the pleasure of watching him flourish. Through hard work and dedication, this ambitious youth rose to the top of an English Language Speaking Contest ISF held earlier this year. Prizes included a trophy and the opportunity to travel to Hong Kong for a weeklong language immersion trip. Now, we’re once again proud to announce that Heng has been accepted to not only one, but two, universities. During the day he’ll continue his English studies at one of Cambodia’s flagship universities; the Institute of Foreign Languages, which is a part of the Royal University of Phnom Penh. In the evenings, Heng will chase his dream to become an architect at Norton University. He took a moment out of his busy schedule to talk to us about his life at ISF and optimistic plans for the future.

As a budding architect, Heng describes his trip with ISF to Hong Kong as absolutely inspiring. “Oh wow, they have very wonderful architecture. A lot of types of building designs with differen advantages, like building a football field on the roof! They don’t have a lot of land so they build up. It’s very smart!”. His dream is to take those world-class engineering techniques and mix them with traditional Khmer design to build progressive, sustainable and modern Cambodian architecture.

As part of the field trip, he also visited two English Schools Foundation (ESF) schools, West Island and KGV schools which exposed him to an educational system different from his own. He came away with an admiration for the experiential way of learning he saw, where students learned through a mix of lecture and lab work.

ESF is the largest provider of English-medium international education in Hong Kong. ISF have recently began a three-year partnership with them to review our Education Programme and develop a strategy to further improve its impact.

Heng credits ISF with helping him develop computer competency, soft skills, and higher-level English conversation. In particular, he stated that his English lessons at ISF have made him more confident. “Because I have experience at ISF, it’s easy to talk to people and understand what they’re doing.”

At home, he says his family is supportive of him as he enters a new life as a university student. Heng's mother is a home-maker and part-time librarian at one of ISF’s community libraries, and his father is a moto-taxi driver. Neither have had higher education.

When talking about beginning this new stage in his education, he expresses the heady mix of exhilaration and dread we all face at life’s big changes. “At first, I feel excited but a little bit nervous. It’s a new school and I don’t know [anyone].” Though Heng seems to be coming to terms with it all, “But now it’s OK, I know I can make friends.”

ISF will continue to support Heng on his educational journey. While he pursues higher education, he will have access to ISF facilities and counselors and will receive support such as school supplies, a laptop and food parcels, which will still be sent to his family monthly to alleviate financial stress. Our aim is to give him, and other students like him that graduate each year, the best possible footing when entering university. With 98% of ISF students progressing to the next grade and 80 new graduates going on to state school, we hope to support many more in the future. For now, we‘ll be rooting for Heng until he receives his cap and gown and beyond.

On behalf of all of us at ISF, thank you for your amazing support over the past year!

The ISF team

*Names of children and youth receiving ISF's support have been changed.

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