Help Youth in Cambodia Keep Their Learning Center!

Dear PEPY friends and supporters, 

We are pleased to share some fantastic news with you! Child's Dream Foundation, our partner for over five years, has made the incredible decision to support our Learning Center in its entirety for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. After facing financial challenges in late 2021, due to USAID's change in funding focus, we are so grateful to be in a place where our program is secure and our team members can go back to focusing on providing the best services to our students. 

We want to express our deepest thanks to you, for contributing to the Learning Center Program, believing in our work, and for allowing us to keep our doors open to the community. 60 full-time students and over 100 workshop participants benefitted from your support. We cannot thank you enough and we look to continue strengthening the Learning Center going forward. 

This quarter in the Learning Center we had some wonderful exchanges and projects that the students thoroughly enjoyed: 

• In the English Learning Project, students recently had an exchange with 2 visited teachers from Ireland and had the opportunity to learn about Irish culture and history. Including dances and songs! In addition, the project has two Khmer and three foreign volunteers to support students' listening skills and conversational skills in English. Two volunteers, Marta and Ashley, are remote and working with small student groups while one volunteer from the USA, named Tommy, has been working in the afternoons in PEPY's Learning Center office. We are so grateful for all our volunteers and our students' focus and efforts.
• The ICT Project participated in workshops and networking programs this quarter to help youth develop their ICT skills and awareness. The first was on the 9th -10th of July and the second was on the 14th of August. They were organized by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM) and SOURMOUY. The topics were Using Social Media Safer and more Cleverly, Social Media Security, and Vlog, Social Media Advertising, and Photography. Students shared that getting the chance to join outside meetings and events is really important and beneficial to their learning. We hope to identify more valuable workshops for them to join in the future!
• In the Youth Empowerment Project, students are working in groups to conduct their Civic Engagement Projects. five groups are focused on environmental action in Kralanh District while five groups are focused on education development in Srei Snam District. Student groups have successfully held meetings with government officials and stakeholders to consider what policies and campaigns they can put in place. The environmental groups are focused on improving the waste management systems in Kralanh Market and improving the behavior of vendors, while the education development groups will be working with the government to build schools and libraries, and run capacity development programs for the teachers. We are so proud of their progress so far and look forward to receiving more updates from them!

To read a more detailed update from the Learning Center and our student stories, we welcome you to read the report we have attached to this email!

If you are interested in learning more about other opportunities to support PEPY, our new Youth Innovators and Incubator Program and our administrative staff are still in need of funding to complete their activities. Please reach out to us for more information and we can help connect you with a cause or initiative that is worthwhile and exciting to you!

Since we are now fully funded, we will be closing this campaign this week and we hope to have your continued support for our Support PEPY and rural youth scholars campaign. 

Sincerely, 

The PEPY Team

Links:

• General Quarter IV Report

• Learning Center Quarter IV Report (PDF)