During my time here in Phnom Penh, I have been making connections with various organizations. One of them is Kampuchean Action for Primary Education (KAPE) which provides scholarships to students in the provinces to try to keep them in high school until the end of Grade 12 as well as encourage them to go on to University within their region. They don’t have the money to send students to Phnom Penh and there is no Law School in the areas where they work.
It is a logical fit with CLEW for KAPE to refer any interested and qualified students to apply for a scholarship from CLEW. We already have a similar arrangement with Plan International who have recommended 10 great students to us over the past 2 years. Unfortunately, we have discovered through our work with Plan that it is very difficult to keep girls in school past grade 9. Most of them drop out to help their parents with the farm work or selling wares or they get married. Or they may go to a factory to earn the minimum wage of $128 per month plus overtime. They then send half of what they make back home to help support their families. Parents who believe in education will do whatever they can to help keep their sons and daughters in school to complete Grade 12 but this seems to be somewhat rare in the rural communities. Another contributing factor is that the high schools for Grades 10 – 12 are usually even farther away than the middle schools.
Meeting the new Students
I had SokMeng, her father and mother, all sign the CLEW form agreeing that she will stay at RULE for 4 years. When it was her mother’s turn, she went to get a lipstick, put it on her thumb and put her thumbprint on the document. This seems to be a common practice here as that is what I had to do to sign the lease for the dorm. Then her younger sister took the lipstick and put some on her lips as you can see in the picture below.
ChaiNgim’s mother said that she believed in education and she supported her daughter going to school even though her neighbours thought she was wasting her time. Initially, after she graduated, it did seem like it may have been a waste of time because there were no job opportunities for her. However, now her mother is vindicated because she can tell her neighbours that her daughter has a scholarship to study Law at the Royal University of Law & Economics in Phnom Penh. How cool is that!!