Boeung Tumpun Community Development Program

In the southwest outskirts of Phnom Penh a gravelly road gives way to a path of dirt and cement chips. On either side houses stand on stilts in the dry season. In the wet season you can only reach these houses by boat. When the water drains the road appears with new muddy holes. The villagers fill the holes in with broken slabs of cement and rock, a solution that creates a navigable but painfully sharp road. The families live here temporarily. At any time they may have to move. For this reason they try to build their houses of steel, to carry easily to their next home. The poorer families have to use wood. Outside the houses are fields of a cheap vegetable - a staple of Cambodian diet, whose name I can't recall.

Sister Regina's Community Health and Education Project comes with a tarp and a deck of cardboard signs. Children come with babies on their hips. Mothers arrive with children to drop off. Children and teacher spread the tarp out on the cement yard under a house.

Class begins. The children, ages 0 to 10, are attentive. They love the attention from the teacher. They love when she calls them up to answer questions. They sing a song about dengue fever. The dengue fever mosquitos come in the day, they sing, so when you rest in the day make sure to be covered.

Regina let us watch this class and take pictures. The children in the back were distracted, catching my eyes to steal a smile. The teacher was animated though. I couldn't understand the words, but it was clear that Regina was right when she said this was a natural born teacher.

Anyone is welcome to the class, but the parents usually don't attend, and the kids don't travel more than a couple hundred meters from their homes. For this reason, the classes move from one small neighborhood to another. They find a nice patch of concrete under a house and ask the owner if they can hold weekly classes. None of the owners have never objected.
Above, the children demonstrate covering your mouth when you cough so you don't spread tuberculosis.

Even though the adults don't come, the health messages taught reach the adults as the kids share their new knowledge with their families. Watching the kids, I saw the benefit went well beyond the health education. Children in poor families hear much fewer words than their richer counterparts. The children we saw who didn't attend class wandered about the road unsupervised. I'm not sure what the kids would do all day, but it was clear that this time with the teacher was a time they cherished. The fact that the teachers come shows the kids that someone cares for them, someone takes time for them, and someone wants to hear their voices.

A few houses down another program was set up. Regina had watched the kids playing and noticed that even the older children didn't play with each other, so much as both play with the same thing. She noticed that the kids had trouble with simple puzzles, even the older kids. So they brought toys to play with - puzzles, interactive games and blocks to help the children develop normally socially and intellectually. This playroom was set up inside one of the one room houses, rented from the owners for $50 per month.


The kids were playing a game they had invented using cards with pictures of fruits and vegetables, many of which I couldn't recognize myself, but they all knew the names in Khmer. Unlike the children we'd seen at the orphanage, these kids were too engaged with each other to pay much attention to us. Plus, why would they want to play with grown-ups who can't recognize a sau- mau when they see one?