AP Residents Enthusiastically Take Part in Cambodia's National Education Campaign

Chiev places an enrolment

poster on a fence in the

Steung Meanchey community,

encouraging families to

register their children in school.

As a member of the Cambodia’s collaborative NGO Education Partnership (NEP), Aziza’s Place participated in the nationwide education campaign to encourage Cambodian families to enroll their children in public school. The children of Aziza’s Place were excited to share the positive education message and distribute posters for families in Steung Meanchey (previously Phnom Penh’s dumpsite). The main objectives of NEP’s 2011 education campaign for Cambodia are to:

• “increase the enrolment rate by encouraging more parents to register and support their children for schooling;
• ensure that all children, girls and boys, have the same opportunity to attend school;
• raise awareness among communities on the importance of education as a key to break the cycle of poverty, making parents aware of their responsibility to bring children to school”.

The AP children all took these messages on board and felt privileged to share in the responsibility to talk with families in their community, encouraging others to see the importance of education. Dressed in bright white Aziza’s Place t-shirts, the AP children broke into groups of 4-5, initiating discussions with parents and children and putting up posters in prominent places among the houses built atop the dumpsite. The children at Aziza’s Place show every day in their hard work and dedication to learning that education is not something to be taken for granted in Cambodia. This was reinforced again in their eagerness to share the positive education messages to the people in their own community.