Why the project?
There are 27 million modern day slaves in the world today, there are 800,000 people trafficked across borders each year, diseases such as Malaria and Dengue fever kill far too many people in Cambodia every year.
It is acknowledged that the best prevention for all these problems is education.
The Problem!
There are an estimated 1.5 Billion illiterate people in the world and two thirds of these are in the Asia Pacific region and Cambodia is on average 30 per cent behind the rest of Asia and the second worst country for literacy standards in the region.
To illustrate this point, eight per cent all rural and remote teachers have had no formal schooling, 75 per cent of all teachers have not had a teaching handbook for four years and while there have been great efforts by many organizations to build schools and encourage participation rates, up until now no one has addressed the key problem:
Does the system being used and the way it is being employed actually work?
The answer is an emphatic NO!
By 2016 there will be 6.7 million children under the age of 14 in the current schooling system in Cambodia so the time to start the change is now.
What we going to do to fix the problem?
The Cambodian Literacy Project is a pilot project using the CLE literacy system and linking the funding of the project through sustainable fundraising techniques developed specifically for this project and that can be replicated anywhere.
The CLE Literacy system was developed in Australia at Griffith University in Queensland and later Queensland University and is taught in over 10 countries with the Thailand Education Department adopting it for grade 1-6 where it has proven to be 100 per cvent more successful than the previouys system used.
Key tourism operators and airlines have been linked into the Cambodian literacy project to assist in fund raising and cost alleviation in a long term sustainable manner beneficial to all parties involved.
The results of linking fundraising and tourism to this project is to create an awareness and an understanding within the local communities of exactly how sustainable tourism works and as a result, better understand the importance of tourism to the community at large.
Rotary International is simarly being used as a fulcrum to create a link between schools in the developed world with their counterparts in Cambodia.
This is in effect creating a cultural bridge between developed and non-developed countries via children of the same age.
This enables sustainable fund raising at the simplest of levels.
An initial Cambodian literacy project pilot program is scxheduled to commence from Octonber 2009.
This will involve up to 250 children in Grade 1 classes in three remote primary schools in rural Cambodia.
Plans are already underway to expand this opportunity to over 100,000 children in multiple grades in multiple schools across Cambodia by 2015.
How you can help – how can you get involved in the Cambodian literacy project
The answer to that is simple – anyone can help be you a member of the public, a tour operator or a business.
And helping can be as simple as by buying a sheet of coloured cardboard on line for 50 cents or a pair of schoolchild’s shoes for $4.00.
Everything you need to know to get involved is on this website but if you do require further information please email Brett Morgan or Kate Lloyd-Williams at then following email address:
Info@cambodialiteracypropject.com.>
