A Humbling Experience

Last month, Mrs Brandreth, Alyaa Bataineh and Kirsty McKay, had the privilege of being able to go and visit Ka Narng Ket School and see it in action.

The journey itself was an arduous one, but filled with anticipation and excitement. After 10 hours in the air, 8 hours travelling over roads and tracks in a 4×4 (oh and a bit on foot when they had to walk over bridges with the car following after!) they finally arrived in the village.

The children attending the school greeted them formally with a bow of their heads, but soon relaxed and felt more comfortable in their company. The children were presented with new resources and had a fabulous time learning how to add with dice, use Numicon (our teachers had to quickly learn how to count in Khmer to be able to teach the children!), how to build amazing Lego models, make shape pictures and draw using chalk. In fact, they managed to decorate the entire school building with chalk drawings, and the great thing is they can do this over and over again as the monsoon rains will keep washing them away. The local teachers and UWS teachers had the opportunity to see how our St Chris teachers used the resources with the children and now have a bank of ideas to use in their lessons. One of the children’s favourite activities though, had to be teaching them how to play ‘duck, duck, goose’. The children’s faces were transformed into huge smiles and laughs as they chased each other round the circle. We are sure this will be a game that they play again and again.

The change that we, at St Chris, have made in the lives of these children was evident to see. They now have a school, teachers, resources and most importantly, support from their families and community. These children want to learn, to improve their lives, to have the opportunity to move on to the next school and to earn money to support their families. We have provided the essential stepping stone in order for them to achieve their goals. Thank you St Chris community!