Press

The Cambridge Chronicle Newspaper
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Cambridge residents’ Cambodia school plans come to fruition

By Crystal Becerril

If Pennies for Peace could build schools in Afghanistan by collecting only pennies, thought Heather Faris and Erika Wentworth, then Cambridge residents could certainly collect enough money to build a school in Cambodia.

Inspired by that movement and by Greg Mortenson’s story, “Three Cups of Tea,” Faris and Wentworth, Cambridge parents, formed Camb2Camb, a volunteer project that raised money to build a school in rural Cambodia. Now, about three years after the project began, the school in Cambodia is complete and 13 students, teachers and community members traveled there for nine days in February to visit the school, learn about Cambodian culture and hold a dedication ceremony.

“I think this type of experience has really opened up all of our eyes to the rest of the world. All of us have a better understanding for different cultures, environments, and ways of living,” said Lucy Flamm, a junior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School who went on the trip, in an e-mail interview.

The project traveled via “word of mom,” said Faris and Wentworth. Several local businesses donated to the project and some became corporate sponsors.

Community fundraising from Oct. 2007 to June 2008 helped raise $24,000, the amount needed to build a school, complete with two computers, three solar panels for energy, and assisting staff, said Heather Faris, co-founder of the project. Members of the Cambodian Ministry of Education, a partner in this project, built the school and employ the staff there, said Faris.

“Due to the genocide which happened 30 years ago, Cambodia is still struggling to reconstruct itself and this is taking a serious toll on education, said Flamm, 16.

Eight students, six from Cambridge Rindge and Latin and two seventh-graders from other Cambridge schools, were selected through an application process. Yard sales, luncheons, and donations funded the trip, said Flamm.

“Already a mature, thoughtful, and knowledgeable group, they became even more so,” said Faris about the students.

Faris described the daily activities on the trip:
With a blizzard delaying their flight, the group had to condense the first day in Cambodia. The group split up; some went to observe a public hearing for the wife of a man in a Khmer Rouge tribunal trial, while others visited Koh Dach to watch the traditional weaving in the village.

The Khmer Rouge were a violent regime, responsible for the deaths of about 1.7 million people, according to the Cambodia Information Center.

The group then brought donated medical supplies to The Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope in Phnom Penh. They dined with Arn Chorn-Pond, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge tribunals and founder of the Cambodia Living Arts.

Prior to the trip, the students had researched different topics that they would encounter in Cambodia, such as human trafficking, women’s rights, and the Khmer Rouge tribunals. One of the required pre-departure readings was “The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodia Heroine” by Somaly Mam.

The group shared a dinner with Mam, where she spoke about her experience as a sex slave and about how she freed 4,000 other girls, according to the project’s website.

The following day the group visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. From there, older students went to “S21,” the Tuol Sleng Prison. They met Chun Mey, one of three living survivors of the prison. Before heading to the dedication ceremony for the Cambridge School, the group visited an orphanage of children whose parents had died of AIDS. The high school students kept a blog while on the trip.

“I CAN’T STOP SMILING!” wrote Violet Brooks-Doucette in one of her posts. “Everyday I reflect on what we did and I say to myself, ‘today was the greatest day of my life,’ then the next day I say the exact same thing!” Violet wrote.

The group joined the students of the Cambridge School in a dedication ceremony, where they played games, sports, and shared in dance. The traveling group donated supplies and gifts to the Cambodian students, including J.K Rowling’s “Harry Potter,” translated into Khmer, the language of Cambodia, Faris said.
Brookline High School is collaborating with Cambridge on a similar project, Faris said.

“By forging new alliances within Cambridge to achieve our goals, we hope to enhance our children’s identity as residents of this diverse and illustrious city.”

Camb2Camb will hold a public presentation within the next few weeks. They will be planning future fundraising events for the rest of the year.

“The next step of the project is really to work to strengthen this connection and make sure it stays strong for the future,” said Flamm.

For more information or to find out how to get involved, please visit http://www.cambcamb.org.

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/05/11/a_chance_to_make_a_difference_overseas/

A chance to make a difference overseas

By Victoria Cheng, Globe Correspondent | May 11, 2008

Four letters may not be a lot, but it’s enough to underpin a $20,000 fund-raising effort to build a school in rural Cambodia. Calling itself the Cambridge School for Cambodia (and Camb-Camb for short), the campaign brings together students, businesses, and several groups across the city, some with deep ties to Cambodia and some who have always called Cambridge home.

Rachael Harkavy, a fifth-grade student at the King Open School, started learning about Cambodia in January when she and her peers in the school’s fifth through eighth grades joined the effort by hosting weekly penny drives. She reels off statistics about the country. “It’s about the size of Oklahoma and has the population of Pennsylvania,” she began.

Camb-Camb is raising money to send to American Assistance for Cambodia, a nonprofit organization run by former Newsweek journalist Bernie Krisher, that has built more than 400 schools across the country.

“We’ll be the 405th school, but it’s not enough,” Harkavy added. “Massachusetts is about half the size of Cambodia and has about 1,000 schools, so that just brings into perspective how many schools Cambodia needs.”

The planned Camb-Camb school will be 40 miles north of Phnom Penh and accommodate between 200 and 400 students. Krisher started the initiative in 1993 and negotiated a memorandum of understanding with the World Bank that called for it to match whatever money he raised. The cost of a school, Krisher said, “is actually about $30,000, and the donor only pays about $13,000.” By contributing an extra $7,000, the Cambridge School for Cambodia will be able to equip its school with an English teacher, solar panels for a computer, and Internet access.

Longteine de Monteiro owns the Elephant Walk restaurants, which feature French and Cambodian cuisine at locations in Cambridge, Boston, and Waltham. The Cambodian native explained that outside assistance is sorely needed in the country, which was devastated first by the spillover effects of the Vietnam War and then by genocide during the brutal rule of the communist Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

“The government now doesn’t really do much to help education,” she said, “so all the foundations from outside of the country who go there and build whatever the country needs, especially schools and hospitals, are very important.”

When Camb-Camb contacted de Monteiro, she agreed to host a benefit dinner at her North Cambridge restaurant early last month.

“We served chicken curry, Salade Cambodgienne, and beef short ribs with green coconut juice,” said Monteiro. The event bumped Camb-Camb’s funds to the $13,300 mark.

The event also gave de Monteiro an opportunity to showcase a prominent part of Cambodian culture – its cuisine – and the desire to teach Cantabrigians about this small country perched on the southeastern peninsula of Asia.

At the King Open School, Rachael and fellow fifth-grader Eliza Klein have made it their goal to involve younger students.

Before classes one day earlier this month, the girls helped set up an origami table at the school entrance, along with an empty water jug inviting donations of spare change. Sixth-grader Brianna Lavelle patiently guided the younger students through the steps of folding a colorful square of paper into the shape of a crane.

“What is this for?” asked 6-year-old Bianca Byfield, as she handed over her crane to be placed on a large branch of a tree that will eventually hold 400.

“Every crane represents one child who will go to school in Cambodia,” said Lavelle’s mother, Risa. “And all of Cambridge is helping raise money.”