Know Our Communities

“So you can get to know the communities we work in and understand the challenges that many Cambodian villages face, we wanted to share with you what life is like for many Cambodians.”

Understand the communities we work with

A dedicated team member at CORDE, Ing Chanthoeurth says,

“Often in Cambodian communities and villages, young people are fighting with each other, there is violence in the family home and parents do not allow their children to attend school. This is because they are poor and need their children to stay home and work on the farm for them.”

As a result a significant number of Cambodian young people are uneducated and therefore do not have access to good jobs that can support them financially and grow their capacity for the future. There is also extremely poor health and environmental awareness meaning children are malnourished, do not have access to clean drinking water and communities do not dispose of their rubbish in an environmentally safe way.

It is for these reasons that CORDE works hard to establish a ‘go to’ place for children, youth and people in a community to come and learn about good agricultural , environmental and health practices. It is a place for children and youth to develop their literacy capacity and form a set of moral values. CORDE spends time educating the parents and leaders of a community around the importance of sending children to school. CORDE’s programs help bring children up to date in their learning who may have missed some schooling so they can reintegrate into the public education system.

In Cambodia CORDE has found that commitment from the community as a whole is required when providing education. A key challenge that many CORDE community teachers face is students coming inconsistently depending on their mood or whether they are busy helping their parents. Students then feel uncomfortable to come to the class, as they are behind. The students that cannot come regularly think they can no longer attend class, as they feel that the teacher will not accept them. CORDE teachers try to contact these students to encourage them to continuing attending, however embarrassment in falling behind and not being able to understand the lesson win out in some cases.

Now you know more about the communities we work with, help us build the capacity of children, youth and communities of Cambodia and be a part of transforming Cambodia into a creative, productive and confident society.