Topic; : Education in Rural Cambodia (Case study about for-profit private sector engage in development cooperation)
I. Introduction
"Education is the most powerful weapon which can use to change the world.", Nelson Mandela.
Education is essential for all individual and their society. The importance of education is truly undeniable for every single person; because it is emphasized by the society we live in. Thoroughly, education plays a crucial role in our society that we cannot imagine life without it. It determined the civilization of human society. It helps us develop a healthy surroundings as well generates an advance community. As a matter of fact, everything we use today is the result of the knowledge that we obtain throughout our life by way of education. Therefore, the more developed and advance life becomes, the more necessary education is for everyone.
Although education has a significant impact on life, the opportunity to formal education is not the same for everyone; especially those are in the third world countries. As a result, more attention and strategies are being implemented to make education accessible for everyone particularly the poor. Because the development progress of a country depends vastly on the standard of education.
Cambodia is one among many other third world countries that has suffered from the post war conflict and has recently open up herself to the world and make reforms in the country within the last two decades and continue till today. The civil war has destroyed the country to level zero included infrastructure and human resources.
Many international NGOs and private sectors have come to Cambodia and giving a lot of financial support and training service, technical assistant, to this developing nation. As for example, Pacific Discovery, an international tour company based in New Zealand has developed their initiative to support public education in rural Cambodia southern part of the country by bringing insightful educational people through facilitated hands-on experience. Pacific Discovery cooperates with a group of New Zealander and established a charitable trust called Books for Cambodia trust aim to supports education and libraries in rural communities school in Cambodia. The trustees and Pacific Discovery cover all administrative costs, purchasing books for libraries, training teachers as librarians and establishing or renovating libraries and in supporting their local partners who provide ongoing assistance to the librarians and schools in Cambodia.
II. Reasons for-profit private sector to engage in this initiative
Pacific Discovery international tour company was founded in 2001 by Scott Burnett and Rachel Sanson, a New Zealander couple. The travel company was created with the aims to work with environmental and outdoor education, teaching, tourism and extensive grass roots travel.
Due to these objectives and visions, Pacific Discovery cooperates with another group of New Zealanders who have visited Cambodia and wanted to contribute to the development of this country. When this group of New Zealanders came to Cambodia, they have visited public schools in rural area of Cambodia and observed the lack of facilities in school and classrooms, shortage of books, poorly trained teachers and librarians, and half-time school attendance have made it difficult to improve quality of education for students. According to a report by government cooperate with UNDP and UNESCO showed that in the year 2000 about 63% of adults in Cambodia were illiterate or had basic skills that they were illiterate or unable to read.
Today 93% of children attend primary school but the dropout rate remains very high and only about 69% of them reach secondary school because of the poor quality of the education system. Studies have confirmed the close link between the person's ability to read and write at his or socio-economic level.
III. Partners involved in this initiative
Pacific Discovery together with the group of New Zealanders established Books for Cambodia Foundation Trust cooperate with Cambodian local partner who is a director and a teacher at one of the school supported by Books for Cambodia. Mr. Mach Im and Ms. Siphen Meas are the main local partners. Ms. Meas who is a teacher in charge of English language teaching at Mouy Ousaphea High School which supported by Books for Cambodia; she has been closely involved in the establishment of the school library and its ongoing development. She has a very strong commitment and passion for education for her students in unremitting and in every aspects of her life. No difference, Mr. Im, Ms. Meas's husband who is a deputy director at Kla Krohim Secondary School also supported by Books for Cambodia. He is an active advocate for the improvement of public school libraries and environment continues to raise awareness with both teachers and students.
Almost all the works depend on our local partners for guidance and assistance. Without them book buying and arranging would be difficult and the training of libraries would not have developed to the extent it has.
IV. Objectives of the initiative
The founders and partners realized that there is an enormous need to develop educational facilities in rural Cambodia. Therefore, they believe it is better to engage on support for the development of school libraries in narrow geographical area where they already have good connections and trusted partners. The main objective of the project is to support for the development of school libraries basically rural public schools. The development of school libraries includes providing books which contain up-to-date information for students, renovating the library, and training teachers and librarians. The target groups are primary, junior and senior high school is Tramkâk district, Takèo province southern part of Cambodia. The reason why they focus on this field is because they want to help students improve their knowledge and capacity by reading and understand the important of self-study outside the classroom. Hence, students will find the library more useful once it is equipped with bookshelves filled with selected Khmer and English books that include fiction, non-fiction and reference books, large tables and chairs where they can enjoy reading in a quiet, comfortable environment during their free time.
V. Characteristics of the initiative and Challenges
The trustees of the foundation raise fund every year to buy books to donate to school libraries and support fund for organize training to librarians and teachers. The concept of doing this is to encourage development of reading culture and habit which will contribute more knowledge to the students; because books have the potential to open up a new world for students. The use of books will provide wider opportunities for students as they progress through school and will enhance their capacity to enter tertiary education. Education assists individuals to move out of poverty and to gain a better life for themselves as well as their families.
The main characteristic of this initiative is to assist and fulfill one of the basic needs of education in certain region in Cambodia which is somehow neglected by the government. They have purchased a small core of books for the libraries; and the stock of books needs to be expanded to maintain interest in the library and reading.
The trustees have realized that there is no budget allocated by the Ministry of Education or the Provincial Education Authority for the purchase of new books for the schools at all. Moreover, the library books are not seen as a priority when compared to the purchase of basic textbooks. Besides, development and/or repair of classrooms and the need to increase teachers' salaries are essential. Furthermore, the local people and some of the recipient schools don't really have a strong commitment to get involved with Books for Cambodia to improve this sector.
Books for Cambodia Trustees has set up some new strategies to challenge what they have faced at the schools and community that they support and also to reach their objective as mentioned above. Their strategies are includes the involvement of the local community and commitment to the development of a school library, school leadership to be totally behind the project, the presence of a highly motivated school librarian who has attended the training course supported by the trust and the existence of an actual physical library space.
VI. Strengths and Weaknesses of this Initiative
Even though Books for Cambodia has established a great initiative to help this developing country, still they need to maintain their strengths and improve their weaknesses in order to make the initiative more effective.
Every year, at the beginning of the academic year the trustees together with the local partners start their works by organizing the librarian and teachers training workshop, buy books and donate it to the schools libraries that they supports. The Trust realizes that supplying books is not enough to make the initiative effective, but organize trainings for the librarians at these schools is essential for the sustainability of the libraries. Most of other projects or initiatives that emerge in Cambodia have set their time limit, whereas Books for Cambodia will continue to run further day to support these schools' libraries. Moreover, this initiative is very much focus on the quality and result rather than the quantity. They could have expanded their initiative to other community, but they didn't, they still focus on improving and looking forward to a better result of the schools they have been supporting.
Though, the initiative is well established, there are still some weaknesses that they have faces. First thing is the lack of cooperation with the local education authority. They should create a closer relationship with them, so they could assist with any difficulties. Besides, since the establishment, Books for Cambodia has not been able to set up an office in Cambodia yet. Sometimes, it's make it a bit too difficult for the local partners to find a place to store the books and other office materials. Furthermore, they don't have any extra budget to support the local partners, because volunteer works by the local partners won't last long if they don't receive a least some benefits for themselves. Lastly, the budget of the Trust mainly depends on the temporary donors and fundraising. There is no permanent donor.
VII. Value Added and its Development Cooperation
The establishment of Books for Cambodia Trust to support education in rural Cambodia has added a great value to education development in Cambodia. For a matter of fact, most Cambodian people and students do not have a habit of reading to enhance their general knowledge and capacity like western people do, according to the survey. This cooperation development is seen as a forefront of school libraries reading revolution as well to develop students' habit of reading. The core value is to help develop human resources in Cambodia. Another essential value they have added is that they have step into fill the missing piece of national as well as global development agenda on improving human resources. Although education in Cambodia has greatly improved after the post war conflict, teachers and students at public school still face a lot of challenging in their daily life. Teachers having inadequate salaries and students face inadequate facilities. Thus, these fourth pillar actors are a very important partner that contributes to development cooperation in a third world country like Cambodia.
The emergence of the fourth pillar has seen to be a great added value to the traditional non-governmental organization; since they engage more closely with the local community through hand-on works and supports. This kind of for-profit private sector actors has set up their own approaches for development cooperation by sending their people to work with the local partners and offers helping hands. Their framework is more like a supply driven not a demand driven. They don't give money directly to the school or community to spend; instead they handle the budget with their local partners and spend on useful things to make sure they can achieve the outcome.
VIII. Analysis and Assessment: General Education System in Cambodia
According to what was described in section (ii), (iv), (v) and (vii), we can hypothesize that, Cambodian public education system is in need of a lot of improvements. Meanwhile the government of Cambodia hasn't been able to address this need accordingly. NGDOs and local and foreign NGOs are still one of the important partners to help this country move out of illiteracy and poverty. Though the current government has made a big progress since the collapse of the post-war conflict in 1989; the development gap is still very big between urban and rural area.
According to a research by International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), Cambodia still listed as one of the least-educated populations in the region. The education slowly improves due to the lack of quality, unequal opportunity to students for all ethnicities, and socio-economic.
The Cambodian Ministry of Education Youth and Sports has implemented a short-term educational policy plan for 2003 - 2010 that devoted to capacity building and human resources development:
1. Equitable access to educational services
2. Quality and efficiency of education services
3. Institutional development and capacity building for decentralization.
However, major shortcomings still continue to limit progress towards each of these goals. The shortcomings include disparities in access to education between rich and poor, urban and rural, distribution of qualified teacher, corruptions and disengagement by the elite in the government system as they turn to private education which serves to reinforce inequalities and deep divisions in the society and so on.
IX. Conclusion
The fourth pillar player such as Pacific Discovery play an active role contributing to development cooperation, though their contributions cannot be compare to the other traditional international donors. However, their actions can inspire others to do the same things as them or even better. They are one among many other development cooperation key players that engaging towards the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. They can be regarded as a new trend of development cooperation in globalizing society; since their emergence is more realistic, they start their action with what they have witnessed. Same thing as Books for Cambodia project, it was established due to what they have witnessed and understood the urgent need of this target group. It is definitely a great initiative that contributes to a better progress in education and human resource development in Cambodia. The initiative helps to improve people's lives and provide opportunities for the rural poor students.
Since Education is one of the most important sectors for a country's progress, the Cambodian government and Ministry of Education should not rely too much on international donors and their development partner; because more or less it is their responsibility. When children hardly access to proper education, it is impossible for one nation to move out from periphery.
