Visiting a Rural School in Cambodia

We have a number of places to visit and programs to run while our Short Term Mission team is in Cambodia.

We went to the Bechan area  and visited a rural school.













This school is organized and run by a local Christian church and charged each student a nominal fee of $5.00 a month.

Children in Cambodia attend a half day school taught in Khmer. Many parents want their children to learn English and would send them to private schools in the afternoon to learn English or Mandarin.
(Though less than 4% of the population, Chinese wield a strong influence here economically.)

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Parents in this village can send their children to this church run school without paying hefty tuition fees charged by the private schools here in Cambodia


On the day we visited the school, we observed a class with students of various age groups and learning abilities.

Dedicated young Christian teachers living in the school and teaching the kids

The teachers are dedicated young teachers of Christian faith.

They displayed great enthusiasm and a loving caring attitude towards their students.

The most touching moment came for me when our team played a group game called " The big Wind Blows...." together with the students.

Kids loved the games we taught them

Following the rules of the game, all the children got up from their seat, ran around trying to get back to their seats.

 There was always one seat less than the number of children, therefore someone would be left out without a seat and became the It.

The It then stood in the middle of circle, yielded out a new command for the others to follow.

That was when we discovered that the new It student was a mute who could not call out the new command. The teacher went and quickly jumped to the student rescue.

I was very surprised that this student with special needs fit in so well with the rest of his classmates!

 He took part in all the activities and we could not tell that he was any different from the others!

Later on, Pastor Teresa gave a brief message about salvation and asked the students to bow down for a prayer. All the children did!


After giving each child a small souvenir, it was time for the students to go home for lunch.

Parents picking up their kids from school on their motorcycles

They lined up quickly, got dismissed and were picked up by their parents. Some students rode home on their bikes.  

Kids riding bikes to go home

It was an enjoyable visit and a nice time interacting with Cambodian students and teachers and watching them in action!



R.T.
Bechan Area
Cambodia