a humbling and inspiring email

Dadaist · Post by **Dadaist** » 15 Feb 2006, 13:13

Some (exhaustive!) detail for the interested :

http://www.chumkriellanguageschool.com/charity.html

Dadaist · Post by **Dadaist** » 02 Mar 2006, 11:44

update from Neil -

Last night we met Mr. Thy's uncle who is deputy director in a large school, and runs three private schools in the province. He works now with an organization called World education, and also works closely with the head of VSO in the province who has a lot more knowledge than me on education here, and better knowledge on how to get funding from larger NGO's, and how to write proposals for funding. I've met him once and I think I can get him involved in the school.
We are working a lot closer now with the director of the public school which most of the private school students go to also.
I'm learning more about private education and all the well informed people I've met so far say this is where children really learn English. In our 4 to 5 staff meeting we are now making a lot of material like flashcards, pictures and games. Apparently the teachers never use material in the public school, they have no money and not much incentive to spend extra time on school as the pay is so low.
I am thinking on focusing my time on getting more children from the poorest families the opertunity of private English language education, perhaps in a few different schools around the province.
My main priority now is getting more volunteer teachers (we have one here for a month at present), very soon 200 monks return to the pagoda next to the school, one of the 'top monks' says we can probably get 100 monks in our conversation class's but only if we have foreign volunteers. This would mean the school can turn a profit, so all the students would benefit

Dadaist · Post by **Dadaist** » 10 Dec 2006, 10:48

At long last an update from Neil - the website and his mail speak for themselves. I know it was a while back, but thanks to those of you who passed him on some money - you can now see what it has done :

http://www.chumkriellanguageschool.com/index.html

Here's the mail he sent us :

Hi All,
well its now been a year and a week since I arrived in Cambodia expecting to do 1 months volunteer teaching. Many thanks to the people who donated money to help the school get a solid grounding. Total money raised was about 3000 dollars, and every penny has gone straight to help those who need it.

I finished updateing the schools website today so please have a look to see whats been done with the money (http://www.chumkriellanguageschool.com/). Websites aren't my forte so please give any comments if you can see how it can be improved. A quick look at the ''more info'' page and the ''services'' page gives a good idea of where the money has been spent.

I've been quite ambitious in my plans for the school in the last year, and we are now doing many things to really support the pupils and give the teachers the best environment to make use of their skills. This has been tough in the last 6 months as I have also started an estate agents business, decided to stop travelling, started seeing a Khmer girl, and bought a property!

Next year will see a more organised strategy plan, mission statement, and budget for the school. We also plan to register a charity, foundation or NGO to make it easy for people who wish to support the school financially to do so confidently.

We have set up one initiative to help the school be more self sufficient where the teachers will teach Khmer to tourists, however right now the school desperately needs some money. The school requires 200-300 US dollars a month in outside cash at the moment, and I have been covering this personally for the last 5 months or so, as I've wanted to get get the school stabilised, and its procedures well documented before asking for assistence.

The lack of a registered charity means its still a case of transferring money to my account if you want to help. I know I''m an estate agents now but I can still be trusted!

In two days time I finally take a holiday to exotic overseas locations (Scotland and England!), I return mid January if my girlfreind hasn't frozen solid by then! I will be happy to answer any questions by email when I get some time.

Hope you are all well,
Neil.