Arts for Cambodian Children & Teens at Champey

December 3 is GlobalGiving Donor Match Day from 12:01AM New York time to 11:59pm 

Donations up to $ 1800 per unique donor are eligible to receive some  matching funds !

We urgently neeed your help to keep this amazing program open in 2025 !

D A M  !   D A M !   D A M ! 

Here is some really great news !  October attendance in D A M classess  averaged 102 students per day ! 

Champey Academy continues to atttract record numbers of students to its DANCE     ART     MUSIC   classes.

Champey Academy of Arts classes continue to attract record numbers of students. CAA provides a safe place for children and teens to have fun, learn about their rich cultural heritage and gain new skills like teamwork,self discipline,  mentoring, leadership and cooperation. It helps them to develop a sense of capability by learning and using new skills. Additionally, by filling their otherwise idle time, these kids are avoiding many of the pitfalls of negative peer pressure to use drugs, join gangs or get into other mischief.

Here is a breakdown of participation in October *

Dance classes  75%  female  /   25% male

Art  classes      37%  female /     63% male

Music classes     8% female /     92% male

       *We don't have the November data yet

All of our classes are offered free of charges 6 days per week, in two daily sessions, mirroring the public school schedule, which enables students to attend school full time and then attend  classes at Champey either before their school class schedule or afterward.

If we were to assume a total of  100 students visits  per day x 6 days per week= 600 weekly  x 50 weeks ( allowing for holidays)_  in a year, this totals to 30,000 student visits in a single year.  Our 2025 projections for costs of $6,700 per month x 12 = $80,400 projected annual operating  cost.  This means that  each student “ session”  has an estimated cost of  just $2.68 per student session. 

It is exciting to consider that each $ 2.68 of your donation can help to  provide a student class  session in Dance   Art  or Music ! This is remarkably great value for each donation dollar ! 

Earlier this year, CAA was facing a total and abrupt close down due to lack of funding.  Due to what we can only refer to as a two separate  Miracle Donations of $ 15,000, CAA has enough funding to get to the New Year and into the  Q 1 2025.  But, we need your help to continue beyond that, especially into the " slow season" when there is no tourist revenue at Champey.

Prior to COVID, we had reserve funds, but the long lasting impact of COVID exhausted those reserve funds, so now Champey operates on a month to month basis and in the past two yeyars, we have been a few weeks away from closing  down more than once. 

In addition to the classes that we provide to our students, we also proviide employment to office staff and our dance, music and art teachers. Additionally, we provide 8  small monthly stipends ( $ 20 - $50)  to  4 dedicated and financially challenged  students who might be forced to quit school to earn money to help their family and to 4 students who face extreme economic hardship and almost certainly would be forced to quit school to work.   Our stipend gives the student families just enough money to  keep these kids in public school and also attending classes at Champey. 

We are deeply grateful for all of our contributors, with special thanks to  our monthly contributitors and we hope that some of you  might consider whether you could make a regularly scheduled monthly contribution.  All amounts are welcome!

Time has shown us that Champey changes lives  and helps children and teens to better explore their potential as they work toward becoming kind, capable and compasionate adults. 

Giving Tuesday is  December 3.  It is a GlobalGiving Match day where contributions up to $ 1800 can receive some matching funds from Global Giviing.

You can help us by posting this update on your social media along with this link:

GlobalGiving Giving Tuesday Match Day

We are deeply grateful to all of you for making thiis program available to our students and we hope  that you will join with us again to keep this program alive.

Barbara & Mark 

 Champey Academy of Arts, our school offering free instruction in Cambodian traditional arts, continues to be a hit with young people in central Phnom Penh.  Attendance last week  totaled a remarkable 661 student visits, which, over our 6 day week roster of classes meant an average daily attendance of 110 students ! We are literally bursting at the seams!   

Our school operates on a schedule offering students the option of studying with us in either the morning or afternoon and each half day session is divided into two class periods of about 90 minutes each.  Since the Cambodian public schools, too, operate on half day sessions, Champey Academy students typically attend either the morning or afternoon session at their local public school and then come to Champey for the other half day to study their choice of dance, music or drawing and painting.

Since  the founding of our school in January of 2013, we have offered our classes entirely free of charge to all youngsters from age 7 to 22 years, although some kids as young as 4 or 5 years can find their way into the dance class and they are always welcomed there.  

In recent months our total daily attendance has been averaging between 85 and 110 students per day after peaking at just over 150 students on one day in May of this year. Last week was a record weekly  high with a total of 661 student visits. We consider about 90 students to be the optimal capacity of our facility and of our teaching staff, so although the attendance is  wonderful, we are carefully monitoring the surge to be sure that we can safely accommodate our students and take care of our teaching staff.

Our school is especially popular with children from the poorest families in the central city.  For those children we provide not just instruction and the opportunity to master new skills but also a safe space to make new friends and enjoy being a child. It is important to appreciate the value of this. This safe space gives  these kids adult supervision and off of the streets and away from gangs, drugs and other misfortune. Over the years, in addition to our wonderful programs, we have served as child safety advocates.. We are on the front lines, understanding family and other dynamics and sometimes literally protecting against human trafficking and other abuses.

Our kids attend Champey  by choice and it is a very happy place.  The discipline of study leads to a sense of pride of accomplishment, builds team work and shows these kids that they are adaptable and capable of learning new things and achieving a level of excellence regardless of their current economic challenges.  These skills will help our kids grow into capable, kind, ethical and accomplished adults.

Won’t you please join us to help our students continue to thrive at our school?

We can easily forget that in the developed world and especially the US, there area many  community programs available  to kids like our students. However,  opportunities such as Champey offers are extremely rare Cambodia.

Our funding is always precarious  and the school now exists quarter to quarter and sometimes month to month. The financial reserves that we had before COVID are long gone and twice in the past two years, including quite recently, we have had to face the possibility of closing the school due to lack of operating funds. Last mmonth, due to  what we literallly call  a miracle donation, we were able to avoid immediate closure. We are hopeful that you will continue to work with us to keep the school in operation.

We are so proud of our students and our staff and we are extremely grateful to you, our wonderful donors for your generous support which makes all of this possible!

Giving Tuesday is December 3, where there will be matching funds. More details will follow as we get closer.

Thank you !

Barbara & Mark