"Floating" School -- Kompong Khleang Village, Cambodia
During the rainy season the Kompong Khleang Village floods by around 3 meters or 10 feet for several months a year. To see the flood level, look at the school picture below and find the water stain on the cement columns.
The school is composed of one large room, which is shared throughout the day by two teachers and three grade levels-- kindergarten, first grade and second grade. When we visited the school for the first time, we quickly noticed that all of the students either sat or kneeled on the floor during class time. Unfortunately, all three-grade levels use the same tables. And as a result, most of the kindergarteners have to kneel during class time to properly reach the tables, making for a very uncomfortable situation.
So in short, our biggest goal for this project was to get the students off the floor during class time and to buy the school some additional items that they lack. With the advice of the teacher, we bought the following: two rolling white boards, 70 small plastic chairs, 20 reading books, enough bars of soap for a year, 20 small hand-towels, one organizing cabinet, six whiteboard refillable markers, 24 boxes of ink cartridges for the markers, 15 boxes of coloring pencils, 8 boxes of crayons, 5 packages of white loose paper, 10 packages of mixed colored paper, 7 educational posters, one large trash can, two soap trays, one hook for the towels, a plastic bin to hold some of the soap, 2 toilet brushes, one large water bucket, and 6 plastic jars to organize the pencils and pens.
Each student also received a personal gift, consisting of: a small bag, two notebooks, a ruler, an eraser, one blue pen, one red pen, two pencils, and a pencil sharpener.
The total project cost was $869, directly helping 153 students.
