Education/Arts Orphan, Disabled Children Cambodia

Dear friends and supporters of our school,

I would like to thank you all for your kind support and especially to those who so generously donate to our school every month!

In this report I would like to bring your attention to our education project for our resident blind children. As you might know, blind children do not receive any support whatsoever from the state. The majority of Cambodia's population lives in rural areas, where there are no NGOs assisting the blind and where there is absolutely no access to to state education because there are no Braille teachers. There are actually very few NGOs assisting blind children in Cambodia and our school is currently the one one in Kampot and the whole of Southwestern Cambodia. 

Many children who are blind are considered a blight to their families and to society and so they are rejected and marginalised, insulted and sometimes abused and forced into begging.

We provide them with accomodation at our school, accompany them to their state school lessons, pay for their Braille teacher and provide vocational and therapeutic training in traditional Cambodian music - Pin Peat, Mohori and Yike. They also study English language and computer skills in the Khmer language.

We are now running a micro-project on Global Giving to specifically sponsor their Braille teacher at a cost of $1500 per academic year. We have only 30 days left to raise these funds and so far we have raised $150. If you would like to be a part of supporting our blind children's scholastic education program, please join us on the Global Giving micro-project "Help our blind children get an Education, Cambodia". Project number 27416. You can also find the direct link on our Facebook page.

Thank you all for your kind attention and valuable support!

Links:

• Official website
• Official Facebook Page

 Dear friends and supporters of our school,

Thank you so much for your incredibly generous participation of our Year-End Campaign. Your participation has been so important and has helped us enormously. In this project report, I would like to describe to you one of our programs which you have supported.

The Yike is an ancient art form, which originates from a fusion of the Khmer and the Chhampa Empires, dating back to around the fourteenth century. Today the descendants of the Kingdom of Champa are known as the Chham and probably were related to Malay people. Their religion is Islam and they are now a minority in Buddhist Cambodia.

Around nine hundred years ago, through the centre of what is now modern-day Cambodia there was the Kingdom of Chhampa. The Khmer kings of Angkor were often at war with the Kings of the Chham, but their close proximity meant an inevitable cultural exchange. Later the Kingdom of Chhampa was assimilated into Cambodia. The epic battles between the two kingdoms can be seen on the famous carvings and bas-reliefs of the temples of Angkor Wat. 

The art of Yike is very similar to the Chham people's music and dance, but Yike in it's original pure form is practiced by very few Cambodians and is an art which is in danger of dying out.

The Yike combines, music using the large Yike drum, song, dance and theatre. Many of the songs are ancient poems with words long-forgotten in Cambodia. Our school has the honour to have in residence for the last seventeen years, two of the last greatest Yike masters in Cambodia who are regarded as national treasures. Master Loak Kru Bèm and his wife Master Neark Kru Savorn* are from Chhouk District and their Yike troupe is famous.

Both of them survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and the war, because they were told to take care of the Khmer Rouge fisheries in high lakes far from the oppressive mass labour camps where the majority of Cambodians were rigidly controlled and executed. However they faced a lot of danger when the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed and Khmer Rouge leaders retreated to their mountain bases in Kampot. The district of Chhouk and neighbouring Chumkiri came under constant fire, guerilla warfare and attacks on the civilian population. The Khmer Rouge factions were in competition with one another and one faction decided to execute Loak Kru Bèm for being a Yike musician. In great fear, he decided to go and see the most powerful Khmer Rouge leader of the area, who dominated both factions, to ask for clemency. The leader in question hearing Loak Kru Bèm play, said that he could not see anything wrong with the music and that Loak Kru Bèm, his wife and family should be left in peace.

Not only do Loak Kru Bèm and Neark Kru Savorn teach Yike at our school for both our residential children and impoverished children from local villages, they are also devoted carers and counsellers to our children. Loak Kru Bèm takes great care of our large garden and both give so much more than is normally required of a teacher. They truly love our children and have profound concern for their welfare. They are sensitive and kind to our little blind and deaf boy, who loves playing the drums because he can feel the vibrations and they encourage him to experiment with the instruments and even to dance. Both masters have prepared special performances with our students and we have together won two national prizes in the capital Phnom Penh and recorded a CD.

You can watch them on our short film posted on our project page. You will understand what special people they are and how honoured and grateful we are to have them at our school. Because of your wonderful and generous help, we are able to support the Yike program and the great benefits it brings both to our children and to keeping alive the ancient, cultural heritage of Cambodia.

Thank you

* Loak Kru means Master (male)  Neark Kru means Master (female). We have not given their full names to protect their privacy.

Links:

• official website
• Official Facebook page

At the beginning of November our school hosted the official ceremony of the International Writers and Readers Festival. Our children performed beautifully and they felt extremely proud to be cultural ambassadors. During the period of the festival we also performed our famous Shadow Puppet Theatre, we hosted a BBC media laboratory and also Lord Puttnam the film producer came and gave a wonderful masterclass on musicals at our school. The British and U.S. Ambassadors came and many people visited and got to know about us.............

Whilst taking the British Ambassador around our school, unfortunately our oldest and most tattered of our dogs had decided at that moment to get onto one of our children's beds! Our lovely white walls were covered with little hand-prints and the monsoon rain had left everything sodden. There revealed was the other part of our school, our living, breathing and very real part. The part that people don't think of, but yet is the heart of our school.

The challenges facing our staff are incredibly complex. We have our blind children and our little blind and deaf boy, who have very specific needs to be met, such as a needing a Braille teacher, Braille materials and a different kind of physical care than our sighted children, as well as special vocational training. Yet we also have children who are orphaned, some who have serious illnesses such as level 3 HIV, epilepsy and even brain-damage.

Those who have been orphaned have gone through incredibly traumatic and painful experiences at a very young age. We have two sisters at our school whose mother died and whose father abandoned them to go and live in Battambang Province in the North-West, (Kampot is in the South-West). The younger sister Sokha was recently diagnosed with severe epliepsy and we must take her for treatment every month to the Kunthea Bopha hospital in Phnom Penh. Her older sister Vy* has important health problems too. She was kicked in the head by a cow when she was around six and was in a coma in the rural hospital. She never received expert treatment, but being a very resiliant girl, she survived. When she was around eight or nine years old, her father came from Battambang and took her away from her aunt while she was out and sold her to a wealthy couple for 300,000 Riel (Less than $100). For four years Vy was their servant and was beaten and stoned by the woman of the couple and forced to work around the clock. Her aunt who was very poor, borrowed money and "bought" her niece back again. There was no peace for Vy though, because her aunt's sister became mentally ill and began coming to their aunt's house and attacking her aunt and Vy. Sokha and Vy were too poor to go to school and being several kilometers from the sea, there was only salt water in the well for washing and not enough to eat. The two sisters became ill with malnutrition and lice-related illnesses, until finally the authorities and their aunt asked our school to assist them.

Vy has blackouts and also understandably, periods where she has difficulty speaking about what happened to her when she was sold. Now she too must go and have a scan on her brain like her sister Sokha, to understand the extent of the brain damage she suffered as a little girl and whether she can be helped.

In August we received into our care six children, five of whom are brothers and sisters. Their orphanage had closed down and the authorities helped place the children at our school. It began to emerge that in their old orphanage they had not had enough to eat, in fact two of the girls aged fourteen and fifteen had not begun their menses and only began after two months at our school. Orphans who had become adults still lived at the orphanage and beat the younger children, in fact we learned that our little blind and deaf boy who had stayed there, was beaten every day. The housemother not having enough to feed the children scavenged for scrap metal and was away most of the time. A climate of fear and a complete lack of adult care and guidance, resulted in the children becoming wild.

Yet they are all lovely warm-hearted children, who were never educated or cared for before. Now we have the delicate task of helping them piece their young lives back together. Their baby brother who has moments of grief and stress shuts himself in the bathroom and screams and bangs the door, but he needs so much love and gentle firmness. Some of the younger children don't know how to use the toliets and so relieve themselves in the bathroom, other children use inappropriate language, because they were not taught anything else.

There has been great improvement in a short space of time since coming to be with us, but perhaps most important of all is that they no longer have that scared, lost look, they have put on weight, regained their health and play and laugh as they need.

Why is Your Help so important? 

Because the children who live in our school are so vulnerable and they just do not have anywhere else to go. They deserve peace, stability, love, kindness, a good education, wholesome food, good living conditions and access to the arts firstly as therapy, after all their hurts and trauma and secondly as part of their cultural heritage as young Cambodians.

Please help us so that we can take care of them. With your help we will feed them, clothe, provide medical care for them, give them transport to hospital in Phnom Penh, as well as scholastic school materials and traditional, Cambodian performing arts education, as well as other forms of vocational training. We aim to raise $7,000 or more.

This season there is really the chance to make a difference, by supporting our children at our school.

How to Help!

Please join our Year-End Campaign starting on #Giving Tuesday on 29th November 2016 from 00:00:01 EST to 31st December 2016 at 23:23.59 EST. Why is it so special? Because on #Giving Tuesday Melinda and Bill Gates are giving 1 million in matching funds and any donations made will be matched 50% by them......but you have to hurry, as it's best to give in the small hours of the morning (EST time) on the 29th to make sure matching funds don't run out. For this campaign you will need to donate using Credit card or Paypal only. Any funds donated on #Giving Tuesday will be counted at the end of the Year-End Campaign. #Giving Tuesday and The Year End Campaign are really important for our school as we raise significant funds to keep our school open and running. We need to raise more than 30 different, unique donors and more than $3,000 to be eligible to win a prize from Global Giving.

Global Giving will be giving $10,000 in prizes to those organisations who raise the most and have the most donors! Donations can be made using Credit card, Paypal, Apple pay, cheque or transfer.

As you might know, our organisation is Cambodian and we have no expatriate overheads and our board of directors is entirely voluntary, so that means all donations go directly to our programs and our children.

Thank you for all the fantastic support you have given. Some of you have supported us throughout the year whilst others donated to our Year-End Campaign last year and the year before too! We are incredibly grateful for your generosity and vital support.

Thank You!

* We have not given our children's full name in order to protect their privacy.

Links:

• officialwebsite
• official Facebook page

Background

Twenty-five years ago, Cambodia was a country emerging from one of the worst genocides' of the 20th century. A country carpet-bombed by the Nixon admistration during the Vietnam war and still after all that suffering a civil war until 1999.

Once known as the rice-bowl of Southeast Asia, Cambodia had been a small, prosperous country with a beautiful cultural heritage. Auguste Rodin witnessing the Cambodian Royal Ballet in the early 1900's said that "Only the Khmers (Cambodians) have learned movements that nobody else has even imagined existed." In ancient times, Cambodia was greatly influenced by India both in the use of the Sanskrit alphabet but also with Hinduism, later Cambodia was to become a Buddhist country and the extraordinary Temples of Angkor were built under an expanding kingdom which was to encompass neighbouring Thailand, Laos and Burma. The result of this was a wonderful cultural heritage of music, dance, theatre, poems and sculptures. Music was used by Cambodian people to express every phase of life, from the cradle to the grave and their culture was an integral part of their society.

Then all was nearly lost in an annhilation of everything to do with art, both ancient and modern, together with skills and learning, doctors and engineers, hospitals, banks, schools, Buddhist temples, infrastructure. Why? Because the Khmer Rouge, an obscure Maoist group led by Pol Pot began, even before 1975, to eradicate all traces of the past, by exterminating artists and educated people. By the end of their regime in 1979, nearly a third of the population had died and ninetry-percent of artists had been killed. The Khmer Rouge then went on to fight a war of attrition from their mountain and jungle bases for another twenty-years.

In 1991 after having visited Cambodia to compile a report on the violation of human rights by the Khmer Rouge, I was asked by the Dean of the Music Faculty at the University of Fine Arts, to return and help teach violin, because so many teachers had died. Graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in London I returned in 1991 to work as a teacher (volunteer) at the university and try and help restore the Western music department together with other teachers. At the same time I learned traditional Cambodian music and began teaching as a volunteer, disabled war veterans in a rehabilitation centre, together with other Cambodian teachers. The effect that music had on these men was extraordinary, some had suffered from depression, anger and suicidal tendencies and when learning music, they began smiling and laughing. I learned the power of music as healing therapy and as a tool to communicate.  Music can describe emotions which cannot be expressed in words.

The first Failure

It wasn't long before I awoke to the fact that the Traditional Music Department was in danger of dying out. Those masters who were still alive were struggling to teach students who just weren't interested or who were too poor to come to lessons. The tradition of music dating back a thousand years, was about to disappear. So with funding from the British Embassy I set up a scholarship scheme based on attendance for traditional music students. The project in itself was successful because the students attended regularly and developed a love and respect for their art. However I could go no further in helping the university and the music department and this was my failure number one.

From my failure number one, I learned that one can only go so far in an existing program. To make real changes, one has to start from the beginning with everyone holding the same work ethics and sharing the same dream.

Looking Forward

From lesson number one and from my experiences at the rehabilitation centre and with old music masters, I decided to start my own music school and really make a proper attempt at saving traditional Cambodian music.

At the time I lived on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh in a room in a wooden house on stilts in a village. The house belonged to a Cambodian woman who also rented the lower part of the house to twelve Vietnamese families who lived in dire poverty, their living quarters consisted of one room per family divided from the others by rush matting. There was no electirity and no running water and I would fetch water from the well and carry it up the ladder to fill the water jar in the communal wash-room.

Living in this way gave me profound insight into the conditions of ordinary people and before long each morning at dawn, there was a queue of parents and their children wanting cuts and wounds to be disinfected, because I was the only person in the village with disinfectant and cotton wool. In those days very poor children suffered incredibily in every way. My question was, if they who had parents were suffering so much, what happened to those without any parents at all and what happened to those who had a disability?

I then understood that building a music school would not be enough and that children who were most vulnerable either through the loss of their parents or through a disability would need proper care and scholastic education, as well as arts training. 

In 1992 in the North-West and South-West of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge were very aggressive and the civilian population suffered many casulties. One of the small towns most affected by Khmer Rouge guerrillas, was Kampot in South-Western Cambodia. Once an important river-town also near the sea and with important heritage sites, it had been devastated during Khmer Rouge rule and the ensuing civil war. The Khmer Rouge had their stronghold in the nearby mountain of Phnom Vor and they regularly attacked villages for miles around. That is where I decided to build our school, because there were almost no aid agencies and to be exact there were only five foreigners in the whole Province. It was a place almost forgotten by NGO's, difficult to get to and with a population literally abandoned to their fate.

So began the long uphill battle to build our school. At that time I was aged twenty and did not know how to drive a car! So I was kindly loaned a car and driver by a British business company to get to Kampot. Although only 137km from the capital Phnom Penh, the roads and bridges were so broken that it took over four hours. On arrival in Kampot I went to see the Deparmtent of Culture and other relevent authorities. They took me to see two pieces of land, one outside the town on the road towards the sea and the other in the center of the town. I chose the latter because of concerns over lack of electricity, water and security issues with the Khmer Rouge. I was then taken for an audience with the Governor of Kampot and told him in Khmer (Cambodian language) what I would like to do. He asked me to sing a Cambodian song which I did and then he said that I could have that piece of land for free. Thanking him very much I asked him to sign a piece of paper in order to show the Ministry of Culture in Phnom Penh.

In 1993 I founded the Khmer Cultural Development Institute, a Cambodian NGO which was ratified by the Supreme National Council. From there I began fundraising to build our school - construct three buildings, as well as a water tank and longer-term funding for childcare support and arts and academic tuition at our school.

Failure Number Two!

It took me over two years to find enough funding. The first challenge was the lack of interest by International NGOs of the value of music therapy and the recognition of the revival of traditional Cambodian culture after the genocide. In those days the arts were seen as a "Waste of time" by the International community. I went from donor to donor and wrote over a hundred letters, but there was no positive result.

I failed for a very long time to bridge that gap of understanding. I had to take a step back and see it from another view point. How do others see art and music and how can I transmit my knowledge and passion for music and help people see from my perspective?

So then the format of my written proposals and my dialogue with potential donors changed and I began to communicate to others in a different way and share with them my vision and passion. In later years UNESCO would declare tradititional Cambodian music, dance and theatre as World Intangible Cultural Heritage. Our school then won the UNESCO World Decade for Cultural Development in 1995. Today of course music and the arts is now considered an essential part of therapy and one would not immagine the resistance there was to this kind of training over twenty years ago.

Failure Number Three!

Another factor was my age and being a woman. Being so young did not help infuse donors with confidence, they were afraid I might not be capable of pulling through the project, seeing it the end or dealing sensibly with funds. I also got into scrapes where male ambassadors and male businessmen misinterpreted my enthusiasm and thought it an invitation to make inappropriate remarks or gestures. That was another failure to be taken seriously as a young woman, but perhaps this time not my failure but theirs. What I learned from that collective failure, was to put my long hair up in a bun, dress very soberly, never take late afternoon or evening meeting appointments and be very serious, calm and determined. Believe in yourself and people will believe in you.

The fundraising continues.....

For a long time I shunted forth between the British Embassy, the Canada Fund and the Embassy of Japan, because each Embassy had shown interest in sponsoring one of the buildings, but nobody wanted to be the first and each was waiting for the other to commit themselves. At some point the British Embassy made a positive decision and then the others followed suit. In the midst of fundraising, personal tragedy came, as three members of my family died back in the UK in a short space of time, I was to lose two more two years later. The British Ambassador began to understand that age was not always a factor, but inner-strength and vision was.

Failure Number Four!

The next challenge was the utter wildness of Kampot, a place without proper law and order. Some in authority were doing logging business with the Khmer Rouge, others were corrupt and police and soldiers regularly shot each other in the settling of accounts. Once funding arrived, building our school was fraught with difficulties. There was a 3pm curfew because the Khmer Rouge controlled the main highway to Phnom Penh, fighting and shelling went on between government forces and the Khmer Rouge near Phnom Vor after the Khmer Rouge had kidnapped three Westerners, who were then tragically executed. Then local officials from the Department of Culture and other departments wanted me to give them pay-offs. All they saw was money. They did not see the school as something positive for their community, they just thought I ought to give them something. I refused categorically and began receiving death-threats and kidnap threats. I failed to see that their experiences after the genocide and the war had led them to think differently from myself and I kept expecting correct behaviour from them, so the situation remained the same.

I learned from this failure, that sometimes we have to take strong action and so I went to the Ministry of Interior and informed the vice-Minister of what was going on. The Ministry of Interior is a powerful entity and their officials told those corrupt officials in Kampot to leave me alone. Things got substantially (although for a long time never completely better,) but much easier to finish the task of building our school!

On August 24th 1994 our school was completed and our first children came to stay with us. The selection of children in need had been done with district authorities, village chiefs and trusted, qualified Cambodian colleagues. One of the last great masters of Pin Peat music came to teach at our school and today his former student Uon Sambo who graduated in the year 2000 and went to University before working as a musician at the Royal Palace, is today our Pin Peat teacher.

Our school has grown to teach not only Pin Peat music, but Mohori music, classical Cambodian ballet, folk dance, rare Yike theatre and we have revived the art of shadow puppet theatre once lost to Kampot. All our staff are Cambodian and our board of directors are voluntary experts who give their time, skill and good-will to help us. Some of our staff have been together since 1994! Over two generations of children have passed through our school and we now have over sixty-five grandchildren born from those who lived and studied with us.

Today we care for orphaned children, some affected with HIV and epilepsy, we also care for the blind and we are currently the only centre in Kampot to give education and rehabilitation to blind children. We also give free arts training to very poor children from local villages as vocational training.

Without the help of donors and individuals like yourselves, our school would not be here today, so...

                                          Thank you - Thank you - Thank you! 

Links:

• Official website
• Official Facebook page

If you go into rural areas in Kampot, away from the main road, you will find many people still without electricity and running water. None of the water whether in the city or the countryside is drinkable without being boiled. Children often go to school barefoot and sometimes miss lessons in order to work in the fields and assist their families. 

Due to lack of government policy regarding the past and the Khmer Rouge genocide (1975-79), there has been no form of truth and reconciliation. An entire country has been left to overcome enormous traumas while their former perpetrators have gone free. The result is not surprisingly a mess. Many older generation people suffer from PTSD have affectivity problems, alcohol and gambling problems, and issues with violence. The younger generation has felt the effect and too many middle-class Cambodians have drug and glue sniffing problems. There is also an ever-widening divide between the rural poor and the wealthy ruling class, with ordinary people being dispossessed of their land, forests decimated and people's livelihoods along with it. Many people in rural areas are desperate to create a better life for themselves and their children and some leave their children behind with elderly relatives and head for Thailand to work there, sometimes never to return. 

Outside Kampot town there lies a village, Phum O' Toch where there are children who struggle to get by from day to day because their parents are not only poor but also have gambling and alcohol addictions. They would very much like to come and study at our school. Our Pin Peat teacher lives nearby and discovered that many of them are naturally very talented artists. For them coming to our school would mean receiving serious vocational training which can shape their futures as professional musicians, shadow puppeteers and/or dancers. However, many of them are too poor to own a bicycle and are fearful of the main road to Kampot in the evening after classes. They would like to come if we can provide them with transport. Coming to our school, receiving training and when needed a hot meal and loving support, as well as medical care and counselling can make all the difference in their young lives. Please visit our micro-project to support their transport costs for this year.

Rithy* is eleven and has been a scholarship pupil and would like to continue performing. He is a very talented musician and performed last year at the first Kampot Writers and Readers Festival. He used to come and eat at our school and sometimes sleep there too when things got too rough at home. Sometimes he did not know when his next meal was coming, because his parents were out gambling. He loved coming to our school. However financial support has dwindled and not being able to provide transport, he could not come anymore. We would really like to be able to continue supporting Rithy and all those children from Phum O' Toch who dream about studying at our school.

Thank you for all the support you have given and for your kindness and generosity through all this time. Please spread the word about our project to help make it possible for our village children to have lessons at our school too.

Thank You

*To protect Rithy's privacy we have not given his real name.

Links:

• Official Facebook Page