The Cambodia Project (CPI) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop secondary education opportunities for underserved children in rural Cambodia. The Cambodia Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization recognized under the Internal Revenue Code of the United States, Public Charity Status 170(b)(1)(A)(vi).
The Cambodia Project was founded in 2006 by Jean-Michel Tijerina, after a trip to Cambodia during which he discovered a need for improved access to basic country infrastructure and education. The organization is managed by staff located in both New York and Cambodia. Development professionals and students from international graduate schools provide technical advice in key areas, such as education planning and economic development. The schools include Columbia University, Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), University of Texas at Austin, and Stanford University. The organization's main priorities are:
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is 181,035 square kilometres in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. The sovereign state of Cambodia has a population of over 16 million. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, practised by approximately 95 percent of the population. The country's minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams and 30 hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic and cultural centre of Cambodia. The kingdom is an elective constitutional monarchy with a monarch, currently Norodom Sihamoni, chosen by the Royal Throne Council as head of state. The head of government is the Prime Minister, currently Hun Sen, the longest serving non-royal leader in Southeast Asia, ruling Cambodia since 1985. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name "Kambuja". This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire, which flourished for over 600 years, allowing successive kings to control and exert influence over much of Southeast Asia and accumulate immense power and wealth. The Indianised kingdom facilitated the spread of first Hinduism and then Buddhism to much of Southeast Asia and undertook many religious infrastructural projects throughout the region, including the construction of more than 1,000 temples and monuments in Angkor alone. Angkor Wat is the most famous of these structures and is designated as a World Heritage Site. After the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, a reduced and weakened Cambodia was then ruled as a vassal state by its neighbours. In 1863, Cambodia became a protectorate of France, which doubled the size of the country by reclaiming the north and west from Thailand.
Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Established in 1754, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world.
The University of Texas at Austin is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. The University of Texas was inducted into the Association of American Universities in 1929, becoming only the third university in the American South to be elected. The institution has the nation's eighth-largest single-campus enrollment, with over 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students and over 24,000 faculty and staff. As of December 2018, it also has the second-largest endowment among higher-education institutions in the US, surpassed only by Harvard University.
* To rebuild the secondary school education system after the loss of many educators during the genocide under the Khmer Rouge. * To build new schools in rural areas of Cambodia not served by other schools. * To provide children access to secondary education regardless of their gender, ethnicity, religion, or disabilities.
The Cambodia Project Mission:
The Cambodia Project's mission is to provide inclusive education to all children from grades 7 to 12, encouraging them to think critically and providing them with vocational skills. Today, only 31% of children and 28% of girls are enrolled in secondary school. [1]
The Cambodia Project will work with three separate communities south of the capital, Phnom Penh: the first in Kep municipality, the second and third in Takeo and Kandal provinces. The government of Cambodia and the World Food Program recognize the populations in these areas as some of the country’s most vulnerable to the cycle of poverty due to low income, lack of access to education, and basic healthcare. The first school is strategically located on the border of Kep and Kampot in order to allow tuition paid by working-class families in Kampot to subsidize tuition for the most needy in Kep.
Phnom Penh, formerly known as Krong Chaktomuk or Krong Chaktomuk Serimongkul, is the capital and most populous city in Cambodia. Phnom Penh has been the national capital since French colonization of Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's economic, industrial, and cultural center.
Takeo is a common masculine Japanese given name.
Kandal is a province (khaet) of Cambodia located in the southeast portion of the country. It completely surrounds the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and borders the provinces of Kampong Speu and Takeo to the west, Kampong Chhnang and Kampong Cham to the north, Prey Veng to the east, and shares an international border with Vietnam to the south. Its capital and largest city is Ta Khmao, which is approximately 8 km south of central Phnom Penh. Kandal is one of the wealthier provinces in the country.
The Cambodia Project has been working with local government officials and communities to provide replicable school models, educational resources, and trained teachers in both the public and private education systems. The CPI model is designed so that each school would become financially self-reliant and locally managed by the end of four years.
Education Objectives
CPI will employ educators from a pool of qualified public school teachers in the region and recruit graduates from the local teacher training colleges, providing employment opportunities in an otherwise narrow job market. One-third of teachers will be hired part-time from neighboring public schools to supplement their government income. School management committees and community task forces will support teacher monitoring and evaluation.
Comprehensive Healthcare
A major barrier for children completing secondary education is illness that takes them out of the classroom. CPI plans to address this issue through an onsite health clinic that offers preventative and routine care for simple health needs and referrals for more complex health conditions.
Environmental Sustainability
The Cambodia Project schools are designed to be environmentally sustainable, based on LEED standards, by deploying energy-efficient technologies, efficient utilization of resources and promoting environmental education. The design will potentially give students experience regarding the operation and maintenance of green technology as part of their vocational training.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is one of the most popular green building certification programs used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of green buildings, homes, and neighborhoods that aims to help building owners and operators be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently.
Economic Sustainability
To finance school operation costs, CPI has developed a sustainable funding model, which is a combination of diverse revenue generating streams. For example, microfinance will be used to provide loans for tuition, entrepreneurial graduates and students’ families. The aim is to facilitate economic development in the school areas. Revenues from this program will be utilized for scholarships to subsidize the lowest income students’ tuition. Other anticipated revenue streams will come from an agriculture program, crafts, ecotourism, and strategic partnerships with NGOs to provide conditional cash grants to families to ensure student attendance, tuition subsidies, and equitable teacher salaries and incentives.
Microfinance is a category of financial services targeted at individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems. Microfinance services are designed to be more affordable to poor and socially marginalized customers and to help them become self-sufficient.
Implementation and Fundraising
Corporate support for The Cambodia Project currently comes from Google, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Susan Hartwig Family Fund, Michiels Architecture & Partners, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, and Raffles Hotels.
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple and Facebook.
Summer 2008 Field Mission:
The summer 2008 in-country field team selected the land site for construction, recruited local contractors and architects, initiated engineering plans for construction, met with students and families for needs assessments and local NGOs and businesses in exploring revenue generation options for sustainability, researched Khmer curriculum for secondary education and teacher professional training, met with pertinent government officials as well as local and international NGOs for research and partnership exploration in regard to education and economic development, and presented a medical needs assessment for the school community.
Summer 2009 Field Mission:
On June 1, 2009 twenty of the organization's 84 members will be traveling to Cambodia. The team will spend the summer recruiting and training teachers for the school, in collaboration with the Takeo Teacher Training College. To develop a health clinic for the students and their families, part of the team will be working with local hospitals and clinics in Takeo, and Kep.
A documentary filmmaker will accompany the team. He will film the progress of the field team and also follow the organization over several years. He plans to produce a film about the Cambodia Project.
