By Barbara Rosasco | Secretary & Treasurer
Students, Student mentors and workers take over Champey Academy during the annual school break!
The 2 month long annual school break for students in Cambodia begins today and children will return to school on October 1. Attendance at Champey Academy is expected to be at full capacity, increasing from an average student count of 60 per day to 90 to 100 students per day or put in other terms, from about 360 student visits per week to 540 to 600 individual class visits per week.
Student class attendance is divided among three areas of study:
The role that Jobs for Youth plays in our Summer Arts Programs
Several of our senior students work part time in our Jobs for Cambodian Youth program and during the busy school break, when classes are filled to capacity, they will spend the majority of their waking hours during the school break constructively engaged either attending art, dance or music classes or helping other students and guests who visit Champey Academy.
Jobs for Cambodian Youth is an important effort to provide safe employment to disadvantaged young people, specifically, students in our arts programs. It also provides an ongoing job track to these students to gain or improve job skills and access to mentoring, and by doing so, work toward a better future.
All of our youthful workers come from highly disadvantaged backgrounds and in addition to the advantages of being in a professional work environment, these students also earn modest amounts of money to help with either personal expenses or to provide needed extra income to supplement extremely poor family budgets.
We currently have 14 young people in our Jobs for Youth Program:
Four full time workers
Ten part time workers
There are currently 4 boys and 4 girls who each earn from $25 to $ 60 per month. The most modestly paid students are those who will attend classes daily and whom we engage to do small tasks as a way to encourage them to continue in their study. These small incomes, even just $ 25 per month can allow the students to continue instead of being told by their parents to stop their studies and to take a part time job for similar pay in the market other menial tasks. Several of our youthful workers also board at the school because of economic hardship.
How does this program tie into International Youth Day?
International Youth Day, founded in 2000 by the United Nations, is celebrated every year on 12th of August. The purpose of International Youth Day is to develop awareness of cultural and legal issues that affect youths and to engage young people to creating positive changes in their community and in their own lives.
The SafeSpaces4Youth Week ( Youth Week at GlobalGiving) showcases the opportunities for youth that . Safe Spaces can provide. Safe spaces are inclusive, offer opportunity for youth to help youth and help youth to build skills.
Champey Academy epitomizes the very concept of SafeSpaces4Youth by offering accessible instruction to all students in a safe, tolerant and motivated environment and by providing opportunity for safe employment to our senior students. Your generosity supports the students in our program and allows them to pursue their dreams of being an artist or performer and it offers a stepping stone to launch a possible career as they acquire on the job experience. Student performers, dancers and musicians, are also paid for their performances at public venues like the Raffle's Hotel.
Recurring monthly donations, which are initiated during SafeSpaces4Youth week, beginning August 6, will receive a 100% match for the first month’s donation.
We really appreciate your generous support
Barbara & Mark Rosasco
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.