Why Cambodia? Well, my mother (Karin) and her partner (Echo) have been sponsoring high school students in Roteang Village, Cambodia, so we're going to go there and meet my mother's high school student. It's a neat program: http://sharingfoundation.org/programs/education-programs/high-school-students.html .
The high school, Jayavarman VII, is eight kilometers up the road from Roteang village, and runs two separate sessions per day. Anyone who has finished 8th grade in the area can go there, but the regular school classes are immense, 75 kids in a class being not unusual. Textbooks are rare or non-existent, discussion or questions are discouraged, and the very poorly paid government teachers often do not show up for class. Available at the same school are "private classes"—this means the teachers, for a fee of about $5.00 per person per month, actually teach. The students have textbooks and discussions and the class size may be 20 students. The quality is obviously very different, but the students learn.
Sponsorship of a TSF high-schooler is $300 per year. The money covers textbooks, teacher fees, paper and writing tools, school uniforms, food at school, and transportation from Roteang village and back each day on the moto-trailer. The other important ingredient is that each child has a specific sponsor, to whom he or she writes four times a year. Sponsors in turn must write back to their students with letters of encouragement and family news. The positive effect of the letter connection is inestimable. To have one's own foreign sponsor, who believes in you and encourages you, is vital—all previous experience led one to believe one was going to be a subsistence farmer or fisherman.
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