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After raising $6,000 to assist tsunami victims in Southeast Asia, the students who make up Columbia’s two-year-old Southeast Asian League (SEAL) decided that their next project also would focus on young people. Then they decided to be even more ambitious. Thus was born the Cambodia Project, a plan to build a middle school in rural Cambodia by spring of 2007.
Still struggling to rebuild itself and come to terms with the ravages of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia is a work in progress. Signs of that progress can be seen in the increased numbers of tourists and in a fledgling environmental movement. But signs of the work yet to be done aren’t hard to find either. Of every 1,000 Cambodian children who enter the first grade, only 20 finish high school. Many drop out at an early age to work and support their parents and siblings.
“In today’s Cambodia, many communities are desperate for assistance with educational infrastructure,” explained project leader Jean-Michel Tijerina, a junior in the School of General Studies (GS) who is combining the study of East Asia, including mastering Mandarin, with international affairs and business.
Tijerina added that it will not be enough for SEAL members to provide villagers with financial and educational support; they must also strive to build cross-cultural bridges. “We don’t just want to help the children in the community. We want the community to have a stake in building and running the school,” he explained.
To achieve these goals, SEAL has partnered with Project New Hope, a local non-governmental organization started by Tiara Delgado, a graduate student in film at the New School in New York City. Delgado recently established a school in Choueng Ek village, near Phnom Penh, which by day offers classes to local children and by night gives training in computers and English to girls who have been rescued from sex trafficking.
SEAL has been relying on Delgado as an informal consultant, and following her example, it hopes that its facility can serve as both a middle school and as a job training center, offering night classes to adults.
Delgado is also working with SEAL member Darina Hul, who is Cambodian-American and graduated last week from the Columbia School of Social Work, to organize two fundraisers. The first event was a charity concert on April 30 in Low Library featuring Cambodian musicians from New York and Philadelphia. Proceeds from that event will help fund the second event in November. The guest list for that gala will include U.N. and other diplomatic officials as well as celebrities.
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Columbia University Engineers Without Borders helped design and build this healthcare facility in Samli, Thailand in 2004.
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The group needs $100,000 to build the school and figures the school will need $30,000 a year for operating costs.
Between the two events, Hul, Delgado, Tijerina and other students have scheduled an early August trip to rural Cambodia to secure the school’s location and collect art to auction off during the gala. The group also plans to line up a civil engineer from the Columbia chapter of Engineers Without Borders to help design the building and consult with the Columbia chapter of UNICEF on developing the school’s curriculum.
Meanwhile, Tijerina and others have started to tackle the most daunting question of all: how to raise funds to sustain the school once it is launched. “We cannot leave the children in this community at the mercy of our single group without ensuring the sustainability of their school,” Tijerina said. But he has faith in the organizers’ dedication. “I am committed to this project for as long as it takes, and other students involved are, too,” he said, adding that he looks forward to the day when Cambodian students visit Columbia, and Columbians visit the school to assist with teaching English and other courses.
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