Supporting Girls' Education in Rural Cambodia
Graduating high school – or even starting it – is not an easy objective for girls in Cambodia, especially in rural areas. While attendance and graduation rates have been steadily rising, many girls still face cultural and economic pressures to drop out, for example to find work, help in the household, or get married. With our small grants program, funded by 10% of income from sales of Diving Deep, Going Far, one of our aims is to address this issue and support projects that encourage girls to complete their education.
Our previous round of grants, in early 2019, was won by Youth Hub, for a project aimed at exactly this: improving girls’ access to education in rural Takeo province. The Youth Hub team was founded in late 2018 by Samphors Phuong Korng and is made up of four female and two male university students in Phnom Penh. The team traveled to Kirivong High School in Takeo province in May and organized a full-day workshop with 29 of the school’s female students.
Activities like this and one of our earlier winners can be incredibly effective. Many of the women in Diving Deep, Going Far were the first in their village to go to university, and their stories are not unique. Due mostly to a lack of exposure and visible role models, it is hard for rural students to dream about going to university or life beyond their village. Interacting with (female) university students that come from villages like theirs, and who have already walked that road, often leads rural students to broaden their horizon and enables them to dream bigger.
Beyond sharing their experiences, the Youth Hub team organized several activities aimed at unlocking the students’ dreams and leadership potential. According to team leader Phuong, it was the first time the high school students engaged in activities like these. Phuong: “The young women were very energetic and excited, and they participated actively all day. We were delighted to see the difference in their thinking and bravery between the morning and afternoon sessions. We were able to share our ideas and experiences with higher education, and the students were thinking more carefully about their future and their careers. Finally, they clearly showed themselves to be leaders when given the authority, in the ‘Village Dream Drawing’ activity. Hopefully our project can help those young women for their dream to get higher education. We believe they can do it, and we believe in our young women, our future leaders of Cambodia.”
Of course, we cannot agree more, and we are very happy to see the impact a small financial contribution can make when put in the right hands. A big thank you to Phuong and the Youth Hub team, who are currently planning their next activity: a full-day environmental education workshop with female students at the Chambok ecotourism site in Kampong Speu province.
A short impression of the day’s activities:
Group discussion and team presentations on the importance of education, obstacles to pursuing higher education, and solutions to those obstacles.
Team debates on whether girls should be educated and whether women’s higher education is bad for their marriage.
Leadership activity: drawing and presentation of the teams’ dreams of what their village should look like.
Enjoyed this story? Find further inspiration in the lives of the women that are reshaping Cambodia’s future — and support more projects like this one!
Photos courtesy of Samphors Phuong Korng.
