Summer Plans

5/1/09

While technically summer vacation for the Cambodian school system is still a few months away, for all intents and purposes it has already started. School attendance is down to about half of what it was before Khmer New Year, as well as teacher attendance. I may teach the occasional class here and there, and I still go to the school every day to answer the same questions from the same students over and over and over again (have you eat rice yet?), but summer vacation has pretty much started. Which is fine, because I actually do have something planned.

One of the things my school desperately needs is a library. The current library, such as it is, is a dark, rather dank room next to the school office. The books are locked up at all times, and the teachers use the room for a separate meeting/drinking/sleeping room during the day. Basically there is no student library. I would like to change that.

Somewhere along the line, the school got some money from the government to build a new building. It probably has something to do with the fact that they changed the name of the school to name it after the prime minister. The new building will have three rooms, to be used as a library, a computer lab, and a sewing room. The sewing room is so students can learn enough of a trade skill so that they can be employed at garment factories, instead of having to work on the farm or, especially in the case of girls, become prostitutes. Who knows if the computer lab will actually have computers; I’m pursuing a few avenues to try and get some. But the new library is where I plan to devote most of my attention.

There are a few fundraising avenues open to us Volunteers. One is through the US embassy and I think USAID, and one is through a system called the Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP). USAID is, of course, the agency through which all that controversial foreign aid money is distributed. I can get some money through the embassy’s Small Projects Assistance program. PCPP is basically a website where volunteers post their proposals, and then people can donate to that project through the website. It’s a way that family and friends can help the volunteer actually accomplish something. Neither of these programs will pay the full cost of the project, however. They are contingent on a percentage of the funds being raised in the community. Other volunteers have had success doing this, and I plan to draw upon their wisdom.

Whichever way I go, My goal is to make the new library really nice. I’m thinking tiled floors (as opposed to the bare concrete of the classrooms), light fixtures, furniture, and bookshelves. There are NGOs that I can go through to get books, as well. I would also like to do a “world map project,” which is basically to paint a giant world map on the wall. That will come later, however.

Also, I’m thinking I might throw in a basketball court for the school. Sort of do an all-around “school improvement project.” This is just a tentative plan, however.

Over the next few months I’m going to start in on the proposals required for these projects. It doesn’t help that my co-teacher, and the one person in this town who speaks fluent English, is always AWOL from school. I will probably have to spend a lot of time forcing him to help. But, if I actually manage to pull this off, then maybe my time spent here will actually have been worth something. Maybe.