Cambodia Diaries - 17 September 2009

Education, education, education

If there is one thing I have learned over the years is that you’re not going to go far wrong with some education behind you.

From my time in Atlanta it was clear that of the many countless faces I met in the correctional facilities of Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana; none of them had an Ivy League education and it was abundantly clear that few achieved anything in school much less aspire to success beyond grade 12.

I have no data to confirm my hunch, but I suspect there is some sort of relationship between a lack of education and crime.  But what is unassailable is that a lack of education and poverty are closely linked. In denying a child the ability to access education in the first place and an opportunity to better themselves through gaining meaningful employment at the end of the process, the shackles of poverty around the poor will remain ad infinitum. All the figures, statistics and research out there confirm that of the 650 million People with Disabilities (‘PWD’) in the world, 450 million of them live below the poverty line. Therefore there appears to be a strong link between poverty and disability and a lack of education will only ever perpetrate the problem.

Over the years, NGOs like us have realised that is not enough to merely make arms and legs without looking at the bigger picture of what happens to your clients once they leave your front door.  Many NGO/charities like us have Community Based Rehabilitation teams offering services to the disadvantaged. One of our programs is designed to encourage children to go to school and last year we supported 457 children and young people to do just that. 

There are however, a number of challenges before us to make programs like this a success.  Firstly, many of the rural families that our children come from are poor. A child from a relatively early age is expected to work and put into the family coffers and the pressure to stop school and plant rice for example, sees many children leave school long before grade 12.  Of course a lot of the parents were never educated and indeed many a person’s development was blighted by the Khmer Rouge banning education and so we also have to work to encourage the parents to see the value of education.

Sadly some PWD are seen as an embarrassment and suffer stigmatization to such an extent, that some families we hear of prefer to hide their family member away from their community then let it be known that they have a PWD in their family. Such cases are particularly challenging in getting a child with low self-esteem into school.

The UN prior to year 2000 created the Millennium Development Goals aimed at improving the quality of life for the world’s poorest people by 2015. One of the targets is that all children should be educated up to grade 9. However, in a country like Cambodia, that still causes a challenge for PWD to reach that target at a time when more and more people graduate both high school and university.  Indeed, such is the clamour for education that there is an abundance of Masters Degrees around the place and leads some to debate just how worthy and genuine some of these degrees are.  Whilst one hears many allegations about the education process from teachers seeking payments from pupils to claims that people merely buy their degrees to query the integrity of the educational system, none of that makes an ounce of difference if you cannot get onto the ladder in the first place and so our schools program works with the families and the local schools to get our younger clients into class. 

We also do a lot of work on building ramps, handrails and accessible toilets for schools to make schools more accessible for children with disabilities.  We also provide materials, uniforms and bikes but one of the saddest things is when a child finishes grade 6 and we cannot find a way to get them to the nearest high school due to the severity of their disability or a lack of transportation.  

There is on huge advantage in having Children with Disabilities (‘CWD’) in mainstream education beyond them benefiting personally. Nothing breaks down barriers and misconceptions between people more then knowing someone who has a disability in the first place and we often hear positive stories of clients and their non-disabled friends getting on famously to bring some light to the challenges.    

Recently I got involved with some initiatives firstly, with the Ministry of Education on how best to train future teachers on disability issues, which is an excellent idea and to which I resisted the temptation to add to my contributions by suggesting “and make sure they do not have to do cross-country runs”.  Ensuring that the teachers are ‘on side’ from the outset is going to be crucial.

Secondly in discussions with The Nippon Foundation, long time supporters of the Cambodia Trust.  At the start of August I flew to Bangkok to take part in a brainstorming session on a project which I cannot say too much about, but which is aimed at addressing the difficulties blind and deaf persons have in particular in getting access to higher education.  If they get it off the ground then it will make a huge difference.  

Whilst there I also spoke at length with some of the Foundation’s representatives about a proposal my boss and I put to them to secure funding to support 40 young Cambodian PWD into university over the next few years. It was tremendous news when the Foundation agreed our proposal and I am now frantically trying to enroll the first cohort of ten young PWD into university over the course of the next few weeks. 40 may seem a small number but alas, the numbers of PWD passing grade 12 is low compared to those without disabilities, but it is a start nonetheless.

This program is quite unique to Cambodia and as far as I am aware, the only other similar project is one granted by the Prime Minister himself.    

A few weeks back with one of my colleagues, we went to a small town near the Vietnamese border to interview nine potential recruits to our program because sadly, several we had identified from within our schools program had failed their grade 12 exams.  It was touching to hear them speak and I was impressed by their eagerness and desire to get into university.  One in the group spoke about how she felt when she was told that she could not go to school because of her disability.  She had lost all hope and had contemplated suicide. A tad drastic maybe, but when you live with despair to have what little hope you have taken away from you must be soul destroying.

Listening to hopeful under-grads for 2009 in Prey Veng

Over the course of the next few months my Khmer colleagues and I will hopefully get our students in and settled and start on a recruitment campaign for the next academic year and it seems that my days of attending Freshers Weeks has some mileage yet.

I have also been teaching English to the North Korean students at our school of prosthetics and orthotics. Not sure if you have met any North Koreans, but this lot are a great bunch of lads. I opened up by deciding to talk football and then played my trump card, five cans of chilled lager and one cold bottle of water for moi and it wasn’t too long before we were all enunciating beautifully.  Certain letters are traditionally more difficult for Asians - the B, L, R and V always gets them and so as an exercise to get the lads linguistically warmed up, I have them say ‘A really lovely lolly’’ before we do anything.

Me and the boys from Pyongyang

We run English classes for our students, who come from all over the Asia region and who have not only the difficulties of learning the art of leg and arm making, but having to do so in another language and so the English practice really helps them and in all probability, it is good to talk about anything other then prosthetics and orthotics for a few hours a week.   

Finally, some good news to end with when on the 10th September our latest crop of students graduated from our school after three hard years.  As they got their results a week earlier, I sat with them for a while as one by one they came down the stairs punching the air in delight at having passed. Alas I did not have a camera to capture the moments and equally, I could not tell those waiting nervously for their results that I knew they had all passed. 

It was a wonderful day with the ambassadors of Britain and Australia, the Minister for Social Affairs, the great and good from the disability sector and a few chaps I have occasional tonic waters with in attendance to wish them all the best before many return to their homelands to commence their careers.

The graduates with His Excellency Ith Sam Heng and the
Ambassadors from Australia and Britain

I have played such an insignificant role in their development by doing a few courses on disability awareness but take great delight in letting the permanent lecturers know that my classes are seen as very funny as much as they are hopefully giving some idea of what the lives of those they will now seek to serve are like outside the doors in the real world.

Cheers

JHx

ps Training was going very well until another back pull a few days back which has held me up again and reinforces the need to call time on it all after NYC. Next stop is a weekend courtesy of my air miles as I do some international training in Singapore.  Thanks to those who already have and in advance to those who will soon be donating funds to www.firstgiving.com/jhnyc