Disability Rights Cambodia Project #13106

Music Training Therapy Blind Youth Cambodia

by Khmer Cultural Development Institute

Project Report | Jul 12, 2019
Please Join us on the 18th July!

By Catherine Louise Geach | Founder

Dear Kind Friends and Supporters of our School,

Thank you so much for your marvelleous help and continued support. We are immensely grateful for your good-will!

Our children have been busy learning how to make traditional shadow puppets. During the dry season we dried and coloured the cow-hide using natural dyes derived from tree bark. This is an ancient method and completely natural. Now the rainy season has begun, we are making the puppets. Our children are learning this skill in the afternoons, after their state school lessons in the mornings and before their music and dance lessons. Our children love making puppets and find it very satisfying creating these lovely works of art. Indeed working with their hands this way is very calming and therapeutic. Soon our puppets will be ready for performance! Our oldest students and our masters also make puppets which can be put on sale to raise funds for our school.

I am very happy to say that after a month at our school, our new group of ten very vulnerable children are already in better health. They are eating nourishing food and are in the proces of receiving medical checks and treatment. One child was already receiving treatment for a serious illness. Our school director in coordination with the local authorities, provided rice, canned fish, cooking oil and other foodstuffs to the mothers of these children. The mothers were also ill and malnourished.

The new children have also been enthusiastically learning new skills, including traditional Cambodian music, dance and Yike.

In just a month, we have noticed that the children are able to speak and articulate better. At the beginning they were so hungry and sick that their brain function had slowed down.

As we are now part of the ChildSafe Alliance and our staff are receiving continual training from the NGO "Friends International", we now open our doors to provide temporary, emergency shelter. Last month we received two emergency cases of battered women with two very young children. We have provided them with shelter and meals, we then coordinated with other NGOs and the local authorities to provde long-term solutions for them.

This all requires support and so we will be focusing our fund-raising efforts on the 18th July GlobalGiving Bonus Day for our "Emergency Program for Vulnerable Children, Cambodia" (Project Number 40599).

Please spread the word about our Bonus Day. It will start at 09:00am (ET) and end on the same day at 11.59pm (ET - Eastern Time, USA).

Donations from $100 to $499 will be matched by GlobalGiving 15%

Donations from $500 to $749 will be matched at 30%

Donations from $750 to $1,000 will be matched 50%

The organisation who raises the most, or who gathers the most donors will receive a bonus prize too!

The Bonus Day is very important for us, because it helps us raise vital funds in the middle of the year, when it is harder to find funds in general.

Thank you from everyone at the Kampot Traditional Music School!

*(Photographs taken with permission by students and staff of KCDI, kind courtesy of Steve Porte)

Learning the Coconut Folk Dance

Folk Dance

Links:

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Jun 3, 2019
Emergency Support, Education and Arts

By Catherine Louise Geach | Founder

Dear friends and supporters of our school,

Thank you so much for all your wonderful donations these last three months. We are truly grateful for your help.

Since I last wrote, we have started our program for very vulnerable and at risk children to come to our school.

These children come from from single-mother families where their fathers have died or abandoned them. Some have no proper home, no running water, no shoes, severe illness due to malnutrition and intestinal worms and can only attend state school erratically due to poverty. Although state school is supposedly free, children must wear school uniform and pay for books and extra courses. Many poor children cannot attend school properly for these reasons.

Their mothers love them, but can hardly cope. There are from three to five children per family. Some mothers have got very sick and malnourished and can no longer work. These women also have not had any education and survive by getting odd labour jobs, so that when they get sick they cannot earn anything at all. There is no social welfare in Cambodia for such people.

The children are at great risk of ending up on the street becoming beggars or being sucked into substance abuse and child gangs involved in theft and illicit activities.

After coordinating with local authorities and careful discussions with the mothers of these children, our school firstly organised emergency food, (rice, cooking oil, canned fish) and then we began the procedure of assisting the children at our school.

We provide the children with transport to our school so that they can have a nutritious meal, receive clothing and medical care and Arts education. We also provide them with school books, pens, soaps and other materials. In the evening after their dinner, our school organises transport home so that they can be with their mothers again.

Mr Sothy our school director is also negotiating with local state school heads to facilitate their schooling for the end of this term. We will then assist them with their schooling at state school for the new upcoming terms. We are also coordinating with the local hospital for health checks and medical treatment.

It's very important that wherever possible children stay with their parent or relative. We do also have another program for resident children, but these are children who have nobody responsible left to care for them and who have been abused or sold by extended family and so cannot stay with them. Our program for blind children is done in coordination with their parents and works as a college format providing rehabilitation and education as they would not be able to receive this in remote rural areas.

Such is the magnitude and gravity of their situation, I have set up a specific micro-project entitled "Emergency Support for Vulnerable Children" Project Number 40599. If any of you are interested in giving specific support or sharing with others, please do so. We will also have a special Bonus Fundraising Day on GlobalGiving on July 18th, with matching funds given by GlobalGiving.

I will not show in this report the conditions in which we found the children, as this would not be dignified or respectful and I'm sure that as life gets better for them they would not like to be remembered in that way. However their situation is very serious. I will show photographs of different children and their activities at our school as an example of what we do. These photographs were made by Steve Porte with permission given by our children and staff.

Thank you for your kind attention and for all your precious help.

Having a laugh during a dance lesson

Mohori music lesson

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Mar 4, 2019
Project Report/Free-Arts-Training-Children-Cambodia #13106

By Catherine Geach | Project Leader

Two Hundred Children visit Our School

Dear Friends and Donors,

Thank you so much for your wonderful help and generosity. We deeply appreciate your support!

In January we hosted the "Kampot Arts Festival" in coordination with our festival partners, Epic Arts. One of the events was a series of workshops held at our school (KCDI). Over two hundred children came to participate and our school was just buzzing with energy and excitement.

The children divided themselves into groups and took turns in trying out the traditional arts, such as classical Cambodian dance, Folk dance, Yike dance, how to make leather Shadow Puppets and how to play Mohori music. The traditional workshops were held by our teachers at KCDI. Contemporary dance and face-painting were taught by Epic Arts, while SVA prepared a mobile library under the shade of the trees in our garden. These kinds of workshops are important for young Cambodians to get to know their artistic heritage, especially after the destruction by the Khmer Rouge and the deaths of so many people during the genocide. Cambodia is also currently facing the challenges of rapid Westernisation and mass tourism, which is threatening to wipe-out ancient cultural traditions, as well as creating further economic hardships for a large percentage of the population who live in rural areas. Our school is dedicated to the care of very vulnerable children and the preservation of the traditional arts for future generations of Cambodians.

Not only do we teach the traditional arts on a daily basis to local, impoverished children, we also do large workshops, so that as many children and youth as possible can have a go and get to know their cultural heritage. These workshops often result in children coming afterwards and with permission from their parents, continuing with their favourite art-form on our Outreach Program, which you so kindly sponsor.

Through the years our school has taught very poor children from Chumkriel and Tray Koh villages. These former alumni have grown up now and some are themselves professional musicians and teachers. We have taught classical dance to girls from Samdech Ta Primary school and taught the arts to over four hundred children from Di Pok State school. We also teach Mohori music to disabled youth and also a group of girls from the local Lycée. We taught traditional music for over a year to disabled students from Epic Arts. We also help liaise and care for those children who are very poor and who sometimes need a meal or other support. Much of this has been possible with your kind donations. Thank you.

Our Outreach Program is the second of our main programs. Our first main program is for Residential Children and details of this program can be found on GlobalGiving (Education-Arts-Orphaned-Disabled-Children-Cambodia). On our Residential Program, we take full-time care of children who have no parents and nobody who can take care of them. Many of these children have been abused and neglected by extended family and have been placed into our care by local authorities. Some of them have life-changing illnesses and injuries. We also provide rehabilitation and care to blind children in coordination with their families and the authorities. Both able-bodied and disabled children receive complete care at our school from infant school until university level. Those who have a safe family link are able to visit their families regularly. We follow International Child Safety Guidelines and all our work is done in close coordination with the Department of Social Affairs, as well as the Ministries of Education and Culture for both our academic and cultural programs.

In order to assist more children through our Outreach Program, I met with the director of the Kampot Department of Social Affairs last month, to discuss our new project, which is to reach out and give substantial support to very vulnerable children who live with single mothers and whose current life circumstances put them at great risk. Some of these children beg in order to survive and don’t go to school, because they are too poor. We will be providing them with food, clothing, school uniforms, school books and stationary, facilitating state school education and of course free arts training, as therapy and vocational training. In the late afternoons we will then provide transport for them to go back to their mothers in their villages. I will keep you informed about this project.

In our world today, we often underestimate the importance of the arts as an essential form of healing and a higher form of human expression. The arts are always the first to be cut from government budgets and many people consider culture a waste of time, without ever having the opportunity to learn about it’s benefits. Many people’s goals are to earn a lot of money and climb up the social ladder. They may go through their lives never knowing that the essential things of life cannot be bought.

From personal experience in teaching Mohori music at a rehabilitation centre near Phnom Penh, I have watched war-injured ex-soldiers recover a sense of dignity and smile again just by learning a musical instrument. My own experiences as a professional musician has allowed me to have the privilege to play not only for a large public, but to bring joy to people with Alzheimer and to quietly sing to dear friends who are dying and who at their request want to hear a beautiful song to relieve them from fear and pain.

In our rush to get through life, we forget that we have been given the gift of music, dance and visual arts to express our higher selves and bring peace and something very special to not only ourselves, but to those around us.

So thank you for helping so many children receive free arts training and for being part of a bigger picture, where young people can learn not only about their heritage, but benefit in immeasurable ways from participating in music, dance and theatre lessons.

Author: Catherine Louise Geach

Position: Founder

Address: 1, Ousaphea, Kampong Bay, Kampot, Kingdom of Cambodia

Facebook. Official Facebook Page: www.Facebook.com/KampotMusicSchool

1)Neark Kru An Teaching Visiting Children Traditional Cambodian Dance: Photo courtesy of KCDI

2) Children learn ancient Yike dance with Neark Kru Savorn (KCDI)

3) Learning how to make Traditional Shadow Puppets

Mobile Library run by SVA in our Garden (KCDI)

Mohori Music Workshop with Loak Kru Samouen (KCDII

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