To Grow An Orchid

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Advancing education in rural Cambodia

Objectives

• Advancement of Education in rural Cambodia, focus on IT and English.
• Relieve financial hardship of poorer students by assisting them to remain at school to complete their education.

Background
In todays’ world Information Technology (Computing) is a cornerstone of successful business, whether it is Manufacturing, Finance or Tourism. Anyone working in an office will need basic IT business skills. All business requires good IT technical staff, it pays well too. Technical Support, Security are hot subjects, website design and of course development as well. There is always demand.
Hangchuon Naron (Minister of MoEYS) has recently been promoting the need to enhance IT education in the Country.
We have seen at schools and institutes in rural communities there is a real lack of experience of with Information Technology. From our observations they cannot pursue projects due to lack of experience, being unable to take first steps or define the finished result.
Having spent my life in IT, and more than 30 years in management, understanding these projects is second nature. A colleague of mine is more technical and can specify practicality in a solution rather than perfection, the latter obviously being far more expensive.
Projects
The initial project is at Kampong Chheuteal Institute of Technology (Kampong Thom Province). There are 20 computers for education and 20 for student use – for 1200+ students.

First Stage

• Identify the weaknesses of the internal computer systems in terms of security, network and resilience. We will fund some equipment to improve this.
• Identify needs for computer applications to automate school management. Without such applications, teachers and students cannot see the benefit of IT. We will fund this software for the first year.
• Provide training of website development to staff and students. Enable the school to create and manage its own website. We will provide tools and fund internet resources to achieve this for the first year.
• Enhance English teaching. Discuss current techniques from elsewhere, demonstrate new resources are now available. We will fund some more modern English books.

This is manageable, achievable and results can be monitored.
It provides a blueprint for undertaking similar projects at other schools/institutes in Cambodia.
Second Stage will be enhancing the project to fund more IT and English education at the school
including (but not limited to) advanced curriculum, more computers, external training for teachers,
more English books, and anything else that arises from first stage.
While this is happening, some teachers will identify students from poorer backgrounds and provide
some funding to assist them complete their education. We have been doing this for the last six
months.
We would hope to expand this to fund more students at more schools and provide scholarships for
further education.