Ben Stokes
We're building a fully staffed, fully sustainable school in a remote, poverty-stricken
community in Cambodia.
The school will house 200+ students and has an estimated lifespan of 40 years.
Your generosity today will lead to the multi-generational change in a community much less fortunate than ours.
Did you know that currently, 121 million children of primary and lower secondary school age do not have access to education?
One-quarter of a Billion children don't have the literacy levels required to bring themselves and their communities out of poverty?
We have a problem with that and we're going to do something about it.
WHY BUILD A SCHOOL?
Even a basic education can help with health and sanitation, economic growth and environmental sustainability to name a few.
Education is the foundation to help bring people out of poverty.
BUT A SCHOOL BUILDING - WHAT ABOUT TEACHERS AND RESOURCES?
That is all covered as part of the project. We're not just building a school, our school will be resourced with teachers and everything required to make it sustainable.
As well as the school itself and the resources required to deliver education we will also be building
Clean drinking water facilities
Toilets
A solar station
Currently, many locals are using hazardous petrol candles and other fossil fuels to light their homes at night.
Locals will pay a small fee to the School to charge batteries which will help the school gain funds for investment into its sustainability.
WHY CAMBODIA?
There are certainly many places that need help and we're hoping over time we can help many of them. With a problem as big as the education crisis we need to start somewhere.
I have personally been to Cambodia on numerous occasions and witnessed the immense poverty first hand.
Here are some other important things to note;
➢ From 1967 – 1975, Cambodia was engaged in a civil war that
resulted in the rise to power of Pol
Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime.
➢ The regime was highly repressive,
autocratic and xenophobic. It is
estimated that during their reign,
between 1.5 and 3m people were
killed in a nationwide genocide.
➢ Teachers, intellectuals and the
educated were subjected to harsh
treatment, thousands of which were
executed.
➢Reports indicate that 90 percent of
teachers were killed under the
Khmer Rouge regime.
➢ As a result, an entire generation of
Cambodian children grew up
illiterate, leading to multi
generational, nation-wide education
deficiencies.
➢After the Khmer Rouge were driven
from power, the education system
had to be re-created from almost
nothing. Today, around 25% of the
adult population are unable to read
and write.
➢ The 2013 Millenium Development
Goals report on education notes that
only 40.6% of children in Cambodia
finish Grade 9.
➢ Many children living in rural areas
don’t have access to a quality
education.
PROJECT PARTNERS:
It takes the effort of many to pull something like this off and we know we can't do it alone.
We've partnered with 7 other business onwners in Perth to help raise the required funds and the project will be completed with an amazing Charity called Classroom of Hope (COH) www.classroomofhope.org
Once the money has been raised;
➢The Cambodian Ministry of
Education provides the land on which
the school will be built.
➢ The local community provides
labour to complete fencing that is
erected around the school grounds.
➢ The Cambodian government hires,
trains and pays the salaries of the
teachers (ongoing) who teach at the
school.
➢ A local NGO, Child’s Dream,
supervises the build to ensure the
construction is to specification and
within budget/time constraints.
➢ COH will provide impact reporting
with GPS coordinates, photos,
statistics and videos for all donors.
➢ Post construction, A Child's Dream
will conduct regular audits to ensure
teaching levels and building
standards are maintained
MORE ABOUT THE CHARITY MAKING IT HAPPEN
Classroom of Hope are an amazing charity for so many reasons including being fully transparent
Find out more here: www.classroomofhope.org
