Filed under: '10 Project B: Khna Rong Village School, Cambodia 2010, Uncategorized
Filed under: '10 Project A: Prey Run Toilet, '10 Project B: Khna Rong Village School, Cambodia 2010
Project Little Dream launched our second service trip to Takeo, Cambodia on 18thDecember, 2010. Marking the first anniversaries of the Prey Run village school and the NFO orphanage expansion, our expedition this year is centred around two main projects: constructing three toilets at the Prey Rune village school and building a new school in Kh’na Rong. These we hope can help facilitate further education and hygiene for children in remote areas of Cambodia, through direct participation of volunteers from Hong Kong and beyond.
Built last Christmas by PLD, the Prey Run village school currently serves some 200 students on a daily basis, and as a meeting centre for the local community. Yet despite of its popular usage, there is only one communal toilet that is being shared amongst all the villagers. Our first project thus involves the construction of three new toilets at the village school site, which we believe can positively improve their current learning environment. However, unlike last year’s toilet-construction project at NFO, the hygiene standard in Prey Run is significantly lower, an example of which is the absence of a proper sewage system at present. Our main challenge, therefore, has been to design such a system to be put in place from scratch. This involves, for instance, laying new drainage and connecting water supplies that did not use to be readily available. With the daily use of improvisation and the help of enthusiastic children, progress so far has been most encouraging. The basic toilet structures are now in place and the cubicles completed.
In Kh’na Rong, we have also embarked on a second project of building a village school for over 150 students. Currently, over a hundred students from nearby villages attend lessons in an extremely confined space that is the few square meters beneath a wooden house. With the development of this project, we hope to build a school on site that can accommodate all these students, thereby providing a more sustainable and secure environment in which more children can learn best and effectively. After days of sand-moving and brick-laying, the framework is now in place, and we are now in the final stages of constructing the roof.
Although lessons in Kh’na Rong officially start late afternoon, the majority of students never fail to arrive by noon, only to assist volunteers in unimaginably many ways. Fuelled by an astonishing fountain of energy, Kh’na Rong children are always eager to help with everything – from ditch-digging to cement-mixing. The transportation of materials from the main road to the site would also have been considerably more difficult, had it not been for the human chain of volunteers and children that enabled an aggregate number of nearly a thousand pieces of tiles and bricks to have been delivered in less than two hours.
Work may be hard; the day may be long; but one look at your armful of hard-knit bracelets, or an echo of children’s singing and laughter, suffices to bring back all the comforts in the world. The return to Takeo this Christmas is one that has been long anticipated by many, and one that is yielding much.
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