TEDx and Desks

TEDx

The best way to ensure the kids of the community centre are engaged by the staff is to make sure the staff themselves are engaged, so we recently took the staff of the Goodwill Center on a staff development day to TEDx in Phnom Penh. The Goodwill Center paid for some of it and your donations helped pay for the rest. While costs are low, for example $9 for a return busfare but that's 1/2 a weeks wage for some locals.

is about spreading ideas, and the localised version allows the same concept to spread out amongst the developing world with TEDx to help them engage their citizens.  There was even some intrigue, with the finale being cancelled due to concerns of the political nature of the content and who it might be offend.  That aside, it was a good event, the staff enjoyed themselves and more importantly listened to both Khmer and foreign speakers on how things could be different, and the importance of education and they got to use networking to ensure ideas could be spread further.

Goodwill Center staff

This was the first time many of them had been to their nations capital, and before the bus arrived to take us all back to Sihanoukville, they managed to to tour their national museum and royal palace to view some of the Khmer history.

Romdual School

General Sok Romdual

Ever since a few local ex-pats got together with a Khmer Army General at Ream River to open a school for the rural kids who lived there, the demand from the locals to send their kids to school has been incredible. They managed to finance the construction of two new classrooms and have asked us to help out with supplying desks, whiteboard and consumables to allow them to employ another teacher for the extra  kids.  We are busily getting quotes to have some desks built, once we know the cost, we will see if the donations  you guys have made can help out.  The school is only there at the General's behest, it's on his land and he helps out personally with lots of the expenses.

Power Outages

The power outages have become worse recently, making it really hard to run evening classes. No lights, no power, no computer classes and the evening English classes are made more difficult.  Surety of electricity is something we in the West mostly take for granted. We are lucky to go a day and not have the power out for many number of hours here.