Sarah in Phnom Penh

It has been a shamefully long time since I have recorded anything here about my work - too busy writing reports about it all at work after I've done it! After returning from UK in September, I had a whirlwind week or so at NEP having high level meetings and consultations about the recommendations and promoting them in the Valuing Teachers report that I had spent 6 months writing. I was helped in this process by a British MP, Angus McNeill, who was able to talk to the Ministers as a fellow politician, and ex teacher, and generally we presented as quite a good team. I'm pretty sure the report would have had a good reception anyway, as the Secretary of State was already on side, but the publicity shots and telly opportunities the MP visit provided, didn't do any harm at the higher level.

Once I started my new job at the Disability Action Council (DAC), I still had to make time to finalise and copy edit the report, which was a rather bitty and lengthy process with editions going between here and London, but ...it is published finally, and in hard copy. It is not quite how I originally envisaged it, and has, of necessity, had much taken out, but I think I was able to keep the main messages in. Here is the link, for any of you who would like to read it: "Teaching Matters"

Here are some pictures of a couple of the things I have been involved in in and around Phnom Penh since starting with the Disability Action Council. At the end of October we had a little leaving party for James, my predecessor, and here I am with my friend Seka, who is the Livelihoods Program Officer.

We are all being serenaded by the lovely Sokhim, who is my counterpart, the Education Officer. Like most Khmer men, he has a very nice singing voice and an expectation that he will take his turn in singing along to the ever present karaoke machine which accompanies every Khmer social occasion from birth to death. Some evenings can feel just like that too. I like to think that Sambath (behind us in the picture above) just had something in his teeth, rather than expressing his feelings about the singing.

This is James receiving his farewell gift from our Executive Director, Vinal. It's time to have a rest James after all your hard work... no really, it is!

One of the first organisations I visited after I started there was the Lavalla School. This was started by an Australian NGO many years ago and is a good example of how children with physical disabilities can get an education with the right support. The building itself, apart from being spotlessly clean (all done by the staff and students themselves) and very well maintained (which does of course cost money practically unavailable to government schools), is no different in structure to the standard school in Cambodia. Ramps for access and desks with enough room underneath, mean that students in wheelchairs can sit in the classroom quite normally.

That is of course once the students have been identified in their communities, shown a motivation to get an education and their families encouraged and supported to enable them to come to the school. The idea is to fast track them through at 2 grades a year, so that they can finish primary ed in 3 years and then go on to a local secondary school or into the vocational training programme affiliated to the school. There are several students in their mid 20s at the school, and most are over the usual school entry age, although that can be as late as 8 anyway.

Many children from the provinces live in the school, some more local are fostered locally with support from Lavalla, and some are brought in by minibus. The children below were this year's intake, not yet in their school uniform, and all delighted and enthusiastic to be starting their education.

This is the dining area - must be the cleanest spot in Cambodia!

In January, Sokhim and I were delighted to be invited to the opening of an Integrated Classroom for children with intellectual disabilities at a primary school to the south of Phnom Penh, funded by HAGAR, an NGO who does much great work among the most vulnerable and marginalised people in society: displaced families, ex trafficked children and very poor families.

There is so much extreme need in the disability sector, the poverty/disability cycle is so strong, that when you hear the stories of these children, you wonder if they would be disabled at all if they had been born into better conditions. Severe anaemia (from malnutrition/wrong feeding) causes irreversible brain damage if not treated before the age of 2, and conditions such as cerebral palsy are often avoidable with adequate pre-natal and delivery care at birth. I'm pretty sure most of the cases of polio, blindness and deafness could have been prevented with immunisation, better hygiene and treatment of simple childhood infections. Any level of basic education would help too.

One of the things local NGOs do is find some of these poor children locked away in their houses, try and convince the families there is some hope and point in basic therapy/exercise/communication etc. and then aim to get these children into an integrated class in a local school. Families in dire need are helped with things like water filters, and parents paid a small amount to assist with the children in the classroom. I have heard of amazing transformations of children who did not react to anything and who had never sat up or fed themselves, after a few months, able to sit or walk and to engage or talk with people and to enjoy their school activities. (The sun did shortly move round out of their faces by the way, I was getting worried about them too at this point!)

The girls performing this opening ceremony dance apparently all have dreadful histories of one sort or another, and were 'rescued' into HAGAR's social programme where they were given shelter and training in lifeskills and Camdodian traditional arts.

Here is the ramp up to the classroom and the accessible toilet to the left. Toilets in schools are a real issue at the best of times, and not having separate ones for girls and/or the ones that are there being unusable or permanently locked is a contributory factor to girls not going to secondary school especially.

These little chaps were onlookers at the ceremony and part of the mainstream school. It was great to see them totally engrossed in a book.

Well, that is just a brief glimpse at a couple of the things I have been involved with. Long meetings, workshops and hours in the office are also essential components of my work but don't make great telling or photos!

These last photos are a bit of a cheat as they are not from Phnom Penh, and not work related, but there already enough photos on the next blog which is all about me out of PP. A group of us joined in with the Angkor Wat Half Marathon at the beginning of December. When I say 'joined in' I mean ran the 10k race. Susan, the great tall thing with the yellow label on in the middle of the picture, did run the half marathon in very good time, but hey, she's a Kiwi with 6 brothers so she's used to running.


It was a fantastic experience, running through the forested temple complex not long after dawn, with other Westerners but also 1700 Khmer nationals, many of whom were disabled. (I never did quite catch up with that one speedy little amputee who stayed just ahead of me all the time). There were also plenty of spectators and a wonderful atmosphere. Phil and I had gone up for the weekend and were staying quite a way from Angkor Wat and a bit out of town. I will always remember cycling on our borrowed bikes, with one dodgy light between us, through the commune just as people were beginning to stir before dawn. Just for that 10 minutes or so, it felt like it could have been centuries ago...

Wow that feels good!

Leonie trying to convince me & Kate that we've only got halfway at the finishing line - oh how Phil laughed!


Me carb loading on pasta the night before - nice!


More soon - and Perry has some more tales to tell as well...

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