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Projects Update
End of Semester Ceremony
On 10th of April, 2016 we celebrated the end of semester ceremony of our English class and we also held a market stall on that day in order to generate more income for our projects.
We invited some parents of our top students and some villagers through our bike ride (a way we do to promote HHA) to join the ceremony. So that they can get more knowledge of our programs and what we are doing to empower Cambodian to create a sustainable future for themselves. Moreover, we have a chance to give them the message of the significance of education and encourage them to involve in their children learning.
On the ceremony, the top three students of each English class and students who have good attitude and attendance were rewarded with some books, pens, and pencils from us.
English Class
On 20th of April, 2016 we started our new semester of our English class. We increase two more classes this term so now we have 10 classes.
This term we start teaching our own textbook and we are going to monitor our students’ progress each month by using our Student Record Book. Student Record Book is a tool of monitoring the progress of our students each month and it works as a messenger between teacher and student parent. We hope that after putting this book in place their parents will engage more in their children’s learning.
Thursday is our conversation class. So all students can learn the basic of conversation in English that they can use to interact with their classmates and teachers. This class aim at building their confidence to speak English in their daily lives, especially at school.
Library
After a few years of trying to get more resource for our library, now we have a lot of books, puzzles, small flashcards, and games for our students. Although, we still need to update new resources for our library every year.
Recently, we have around 40 students joining our library each day. They join and follow our library timetable, which we already set equal time between reading and playing games or puzzles. Now we can see that they are likely to read than before and this would help them to develop their knowledge and skills as well as building a good routine for their lives.
We have had less students on Sunday, however after trying various methods to get more students now it’s increasing to more than ten each week. The reasons behind trying to get more and more students to library are when they join library they will learn something, increase their willingness to learn, avoid bad peer pressure, and develop their good attitude.
Sewing program
At the end of last year, six students graduated from our advance and expert class. Three students moved to expert class and three students have completed the course and started their home businesses and worked at sewing shops.
We have started our new term in January. There are six students in the beginner class and three students in the expert class.
Before, our sewing program was a yearlong course which has three terms, four months of each term, but we have changed to ten months course which has only two terms, five months of each term by cutting some lessons which is not so important for our students. This way, we can reduce the time of our students’ learning which most of them suggested and save us more money on expenses.
As we had problem last terms about the students’ dropping out of school, we have updated the contract and some rules that before they decided to join our class they have to understand and must have a strong commitment to learn with us and we have put a consequence if they stop studying with us which tell them that they must take responsibilities of their lives. This means we have kept ALL the students from beginner class, and our new method works.
Our expert class will be graduated at the end of May next month, so we are going to have a new beginner class. Seyla, our vocational training manager, has been recruiting the students for this class and we are really proud that more villagers have known about our program and most of them came to register at our office which saves us a lot of time on recruiting. We have nine students so far and Seyla is going to do the poor assessment survey with them to see if they meet our criteria.
Graduated students Refreshment Workshop
This workshop is aim to try to keep in touch with all of our graduated students, and to follow up with them about how they are doing with the skill and how we can help them more about the sewing skill or what they need to improve. We will run this workshop once a month for five months by inviting them to come to our organization. We will choose the important topics to review and discuss on how to improve their businesses.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence has happened very often in Cambodian families as most of them don’t understand what domestic violence is. We have run this workshop aims to reduce and protect the violence and how they can bring happiness into their families.
This year, we are not only run for the husbands or wives, but we also run for men and women who plan to get marry as well, so they can prepare well for their families’ lives. We aim to run two workshops for at least twenty families joining with us. Thai, our trainer has updated the workshop curriculum which we will run for three sessions. Two sessions focus on how they can bring happiness into their families, including no domestic violence, understand their responsibilities and some more important things. This year, Thai also thought that financial problem is one main reason lead to violence, so he also add one more workshop on Personal Money Management on the last sessions for those who join our domestic violence, so we can make sure that after this workshop, we hope to see the positive change from our participants.
Microfinance
Five loans were finished this year with one hundred percent repayment rate. We currently have ten loans, including four new loans. They use for their businesses such as selling vegetables, growing vegetables, selling food, buying material for carving and buying recycling.
We have three bad repayments as they have problem with their businesses and a family member has been sick. We have delayed our loans and let them to stand up until they can repay back our loan.
This year, we aim to provide ten additional loans to our villagers if the need arises.
Public school teachers training
In March this year, our director, Thai shared a training about teaching methodology to 15 teachers at public school in order to make sure that they provide a quality of education to their students and also our students who studying English with us as well. This happened when we have seen the quality teaching of public school teachers still limited.
The training conducted four sessions which focused on discussing on problems about their teaching and solutions, designing their teaching plan and facilitating technique. After training, the teachers have understood more about designing a good teaching plan and techniques on teaching, especially on how to motivate students in learning by using games as parts of their teaching which they rarely to use in the class.
Employee External Training
In the early of this year, we have sent our staff to participate training related to their current jobs in order to improve their knowledge and increase productivities.
We sent them to Possibilities World, an excellent training company in Siem Reap. They participated in various topics such as Train the Trainer, Beat the burn-out, Communication and Cultural Understanding, Speaking with confidence in a public forum, Resilience and Resourcefulness.
After joining the workshop, our staff brings back their knowledge to improve their works and increase their productivities and also they run those workshops to all of our staff on our staff development workshops on Sunday as well.
Coins for Cambodia
It costs approximately $5,300AUD to run Human and Hope Association each month, providing more than 150 villagers with sewing, English, preschool, Khmer and art classes, access to their library, microfinance loans, a family farm program, community workshops and university scholarships.
To help the team at Human and Hope Association fund these crucial costs, our supporter, Holstein Wong, is running a campaign called ‘Coins for Cambodia’. Individuals and clubs can sign up at http://www.humanandhopeassociation.org/coins-for-cambodia/ and download a tin cover. They can then make their own money tin using recycled milk cartons, shoeboxes, bottles or cans and start saving their loose change.
To put things in perspective, here is what your loose change can achieve:
5 cents – Print a community announcement
10 cents – A pencil for an opportunity scholarship
20 cents – A paintbrush for art class
50 cents – Provide a villager with a toothbrush after partaking in hygiene workshops
$1 – A kilogram of rice and vegetables for a sewing student stipend
$2 – A packet of seeds for participants in the family farm program
There are handicraft packs available for the highest individual and club fundraisers. The loose change challenge officially begins on June 1st, however you can register and start saving now!
Fashion Revolution
Fashion Revolution week is an annual tribute to the victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, and a time to raise awareness about garment workers' rights and the provenance of our clothing.
We also joined this campaign through posting this to our social media.
Here is what Sally, our advisor posted on our facebook on April, 19th:
This week is Fashion Revolution Week, an annual tribute to the victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse. We train Cambodians in sewing so that they can move their way out of poverty, and provide our seamstresses with fair wages, the ability to make our handicrafts at their homes so they can look after their children and ongoing training and support.
We urge you to ask yourself the question, "Who made my clothes?" and purchase from ethical companies.
If you wanted to support our seamstresses and NGO's, head to our Etsy store!https://www.etsy.com/shop/HopeHandicrafts
San Thai
Director
Human and Hope Association
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Donate: http://goo.gl/jlgNO2
Shop in our online store: http://goo.gl/Xa6S7j
Find out more: www.humanandhopeassociation.org
Follow us: www.facebook.com/HumanAndHopeAssociation
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