Partner institution: Original Volunteers CambodiaWebsite: http://www.originalvolunteers.co.uk/destinations/cambodia.html
Contributors (2012):Nikita Pembleton
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The project is called the Hope agency. The project was set in the middle of no where in a village with Cambodian locals. The local children could speak a few phrases of English such has hello and how are you, however the parents and older members of the village did not speak much English at all.
The project is situated in a very rural area. The accommodation is a concrete building on a plot of grass land with a little open classroom attached to the concrete building. The shower facilities were a bucket shower with water which was pumped from the pond across from the setting, the toilet was a normal toilet however it did not have a flush so you had to tip a bucket of water down the toilet to flush it away. There were two bedrooms next to each other which you shared with other volunteers, as soon as you walk outside the bedroom you are basically at the school, at first this seemed a bit strange as there were no where to get away however over time this was handy as you never needed to travel to get to the setting.
When arriving at the project the 4 volunteers were very welcoming and immediately started explaining the project to the new volunteers discussing how the day is run. Children still went to school else where so the project was not a school itself, it was somewhere that provided extra teaching to the local children to help them speak English. The project was not compulsory for the children to come although children could come onto the land freely as they wished, you would often see children come and play on the grass outside the school as this provided a meeting point where they could meet and play with other children within the village. A lot of children often come to the classes which were very beneficial and nice to see as the local children and families enjoyed watching the volunteers work with the children and the locals also valued the importance of education for a better future.
Planning lessons for the children each day was essential, the lessons were games and flash cards to help teach them the alphabet, simple sentences, colours, shapes and numbers. The co-ordinators arranged for an interprator to come into some of the classes which was very useful as this helped the children understand simple instructions for games etc. The co-ordinator said that this also helped the interprator as he was learning more English from the volunteers.
As the project is newly set up there were not much structure to the project and volunteers often had to take on a lot of the responsibility themselves, some days the co-ordinator would be around but other days he was not around so it was left down to the volunteers to plan all the work and decide which classes they were going to take. Volunteers had said that at first they felt like they had been chucked in the deep end which initially made them worry, however new volunteers was given the opportunity to watch a few of the older volunteers teach for the first day so it gave them a rough idea of what they needed to do when they taught the classes themselves.
Before and after classes volunteers would often go outside onto the grass land and play ball games, skipping and various other games with the children.
The cook who was the co-ordinators sister lived in a little straw hut on the land across from the building, she was very nice and always tried her best cooking meals to please us. For all three meals of the day it was very often rice and some sauce with veg and meat. Occasionally she would make a scrambled egg sandwich in a morning which all the volunteers loved :D There were always bottled water around so you never had to worry about getting a drink.
After the first week when the new volunteers felt more at ease within the village, they would often walk daily to a shack as they sold a few packs of Cambodian crisps and sweets. The crisps worked out about 8p each so volunteers brought numerous packs and this is what some of them lived on for the next couple of days.
When volunteers first walked through the village the locals were mesmerised and come to the front of their homes and waved and smiled at us, they were very very nice to us all.
Through discussions with the co-ordinator he explained how he encouraged the children to come to the school when he first set up the project, he mentioned that he holded a community meeting explaining to all the locals what he wanted to do and why. He told them how it would benefit the children and then he stated his two main goals which were 1. Education 2. Food production. He told me that children and families were very took up with this and many local children come to the project daily.
There are many places to visit at the weekends such as: the capital Phnom Penh, the coast, the killing fields, the king’s palace, and Siem Reap- the temples of Angkor and many many more. There are plenty of pubs and resturants at most tourist areas with reasonably cheap food and accomodation.
Things to do:
Things to be aware of: