Thanks to the commitment of the teachers, to whom we have confided the task of controlling the pupils’ absences, we have been able to establish very exact lists of present and absent pupils. Based on the lists, we will develop precise statistics for the children (types and number of absences). This will give us a useful tool when it comes to discussing, behind closed doors, with those families who show slackness with regard to the schooling of their kids.

 

 

 

The constant dialogue with the families, which we try to hold in the deepest respect of the Khmer traditions, cost us enormous amounts of energy. As a matter of fact, it is terribly difficult to make the families aware of the importance of their children’s education, even the more so since most parents themselves are illiterate. Decades of war and a horrendous genocide have left open wounds in the adults; wounds that will probably never heal. They are only capable of seeing life in the short-term perspective and of living from day to day, in a spirit of unwavering fatalism. They have survived, and they continue to survive, because that’s the way it is, and because there is no alternative to accepting the sad lot one has been given.



Furthermore, we have to bring in line with each other our goals and objectives, and their traditions and vital needs; this is absolutely necessary in order not the interrupt the dialogue that we have with the families. An interruption would without a doubt serve to keep the children yet a little further away from their school. In spite of our regular gifts of 20 kg bags of rice to 54 families, we will have to put even more pressure on some, who continue to use the children to search for food. This food-hunt takes place after nightfall in the rice fields, and the children who participate in it are very often too tired to go to school the next morning.

 

We are committed to equip these children for their future, inspiring them with hope. In school, they play, they laugh and they learn to read and write; in short: they live the life that all children should be living, and that is already worth a lot. The future of these kids, of their families and of Cambodia as a whole depends inexorably on their education. Therefore, we go on unflaggingly with our dialoguing and our prevention work in the villages, especially concentrating on the very poorest families, living on less than one Euro a day. We carefully choose the schools, all situated in zones of widespread poverty.


The big school vacations will soon start for the Cambodian children. They coincide with the rain season and therefore with the peak of the rice production work. There will not only be adults working in the rice fields, but whole families will contribute to the hard work of planting and taking care of the rice.


If it interests you, you can send us a small message while clicking message for AVEC


Note: photos copyright: www.info-avec.org

Text corrected and translated by: Charlotta Friedner