I just wanted to share a handful of delightful pics of our slum village students with their brand new text books that we have been able to purchase for them in the past week.

You may recall that there was a sense of urgency to acquire these new Government issued (but not funded) text books that our primary school curriculum that we deliver to in excess of 1200 students at two schools is based on as the current ones are about to be superseded. With the need for 3200 new books across all grades at a cost of AU$13,000 we were somewhat anxious about being able to purchase the books before the old ones became redundant, but as I've shared previously we had a very generous donor come forward and cover the cost in its entirety which was just amazing.

The implications of not acquiring the new books would have potentially been that the primary school education our students receive wouldn't be recognised by the Ministry of Education and therefore our kids would have been denied the opportunity to go onto high school so the acquisition was a really important one in the overall scheme of our projects in Cambodia.

Also, I've included a pic of a load of timber being delivered to a small lake near our school in Oddar Meanchey which might seem a bit random, but is quite significant as it will be used to construct two new AU$5000 each classrooms at the school to cope with the reduced student density requirements as a result of Covid. The timber is currently submerged in the lake to season it prior to construction which will give it far greater longevity and structural integrity. We look forward to having these classrooms completed before the wet season arrives so that the kids that are currently being forced to learn outside will have somewhere protected to receive their education.

All the best for the rest of your week.