30 January 2009
Children have a right to education and to violence-free schools. This is the message that, with help from DFID, Chea Sinit and others like him are spreading in one of the poorest districts of Cambodia.
As well as being a high school student, Sinit, 20, is the manager of a mobile library in the village of Andong Lngieng. The library is little more than a chest filled with books and educational games, but for local children it has opened up whole new worlds of learning. Around 30 children a week visit the library, eager to put the literacy skills they have acquired at school to good use.
Sinit takes his role as the library's manager seriously, keeping detailed records of the books being taken out. According to his records, the first book borrowed from the library was about prehistoric humans.
Access to such educational resources is a fairly new development in Andong Lngieng and would have been unimaginable a generation ago. When Sinit was growing up, the village was without a primary school, which is why he came late to education himself. But today, with a school, a library and "child peer educators" like Sinit around, the village's children at last have a chance to learn.
Putting school first
The development agency Plan launched its peer educator project in 2007 with DFID's support. As well as making learning materials available to children, peer educators like Sinit inspire them to stay in school and work hard at their studies. They also talk to any parents who are pressuring their children to drop out of school to work on the land.
"We try to explain that their children will have very difficult lives if they don't get an education," says Sinit. "Parents are afraid that their children will lose their focus on farm work if they go to school, even if it's only for half a day... If it were up to me I'd want all children to go to school, but that's a very challenging task."
Since the project began, the drop-out rate at Sinit's high school has fallen to about 10%, and the number of children using the mobile library has not stopped growing. According to Sinit, users of the mobile library are the least likely to drop out of school.
Sinit's father, Vann Sok Chea, also plays a part in the project. As well as helping the peer educators to keep records, he uses his own personal recollections to remind them that violence has no place in the classroom.
His own education was interrupted by the war that spilled over from Vietnam into Cambodia in the 1960s. In those days, school could be a dangerous place for children. A teacher hit one boy so hard that the child lost sight in one of his eyes, he recalls.
"When I was young there was no organisation to encourage children to go to school and advise them of their rights," he says. "I wish we had that when I was young."
Facts and stats
- The Child Peer Educator (CPE) project began in 2007 and will run for three years. It will cover 170 villages and cost a total of approximately £42,500.
- The project is funded through Plan International’s Partner Programme Arrangement (PPA) with DFID. Plan's PPA provides £7.1 million between 2008 and 2011.
- Part of this funding is supporting children to participate in school councils and develop projects that address the issue of violence in schools.
- Plan Cambodia has set up mobile libraries in 10 villages in seven communes of Dambae district in Kampong Cham Province. Child peer educators manage the libraries with support from adult advisors.
- Net primary school enrolment in Cambodia increased from 76% to 91% between 1997 and 2005.