The Angkor Project overview

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Nelson Mandela

Children helping to rebuild the schools of Cambodia through sister school relationships

To best prepare our students to be part of a shared future of regional stability, prosperity and peace, they need to engage with studies of Asia and Asian languages to build Asia literacy across our school communities. Such views are supported by Australian politicians, business leaders and educators, and are reflected in the Australian Curriculum general capabilities, the cross curriculum priority of Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and in the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper.

The White Paper includes strategies for Building Asia Literacy through Schools to ensure that:

• “Every student will have significant exposure to studies of Asia across the curriculum to increase their cultural knowledge and skills and enable them to be active in the region; and
• “All schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language, including through increased use of the National Broadband Network.” (Executive Summary, p16).

These significant national documents reiterate the need to develop people to people links across the Asian region to build Asia relevant capabilities.

Aims of the Angkor Project

1. Promote cooperation in education between the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (Cambodia) and the Department of Education (Western Australia);
2. Build mutual capacity in the Cambodian and Western Australian educations systems; and
3. Establish cultural awareness between Western Australia and Cambodia.

These aims will be met through sister school relationships and the provision of professional learning programs to Cambodian educators. Children, teachers and school administrators will all benefit as a result of participation.

The Angkor Project in a regional context

• There has been an increase of 2 billion people since 1950 and much of this growth has been in the Asia region;
• 61 million children around the world did not get the chance to go to school today.
• 134 million children between the ages of 7 to 18 have never been to school.
• 26 million of these children live in the Asia-Pacific region.
• Currently two thirds of the world’s poor live in Asia;
• Economic progress has assisted large portions of the population within the Asia region to rise out of poverty;
• However, Southeast Asia’s poorest people lack access to essential services, safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and face rising rates of tuberculosis and HIV AIDS; and
• Living conditions of large sections of the populations of poor people in Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) and the Philippines, in particular, still lag far behind those in neighbouring countries.

Here is the challenge; to break the cycle of poverty through education in Cambodia.

At the heart of the Angkor Project are 22 sister-school relationships, linking Western Australian students with schools in the Kampong Speu Province, 50km from the capital Phnom Penh.

Schools in Kampong Speu Province lack basic amenities such as drinking water, adequate sanitation, electricity and classrooms, problems which are compounded by a lack of trained teachers and administrators. School classes, on average, comprise 50 students and there are few teaching resources.

Central to the aims of the Angkor Project therefore, is fundraising, instigated and organised by our students to support the rebuilding of schools in Cambodia. All funds raised by WA students are transferred to the District Office in Kampong Speu for further distribution to sister schools. This process is monitored through an annual study tour, available to all WA public school educators, which includes visiting and teaching in sister schools and an option to contribute to professional learning for Cambodian principals and teachers.

There are myriad benefits provided by the Angkor Project; it gives our students and schools a global perspective, promotes active citizenship and develops Asia literacy across school communities. Significantly, it improves the learning environment for Cambodian students in a very practical sense and develops strong, sustainable and mutually beneficial intercultural relationships within our region.