UNA-USA Dane County Events

The Cambodian School Project is a Madison-based non-profit that has

built four elementary schools in northwestern Cambodia and adopted two

others. It now supports 1700 children each year with school uniforms,

books, supplies and English lessons. Most recently, it has completed

a technical school for elementary school graduates, funded by a Czech

group to honor teachers who inspired them during the dark days of their

communist occupation. The Czechs feel kinship with the Cambodians who

suffered a terrible holocaust while ruled by the communists.

The school project began with founder Sarith Ou’s desire to help the farm

children of his country. Friends began to help him informally, and in 1992

a group of his friends and associated incorporated as a non-profit, and

have been meeting and raising funds ever since. Elementary schools are

not the only focus. The project’s bike program has provided used bikes

for the neediest of its students to make the many kilometer long commute

to high school. In this year’s rainy season’s flooding, rice for food and

planting was given to the poorest of 250 families displaced for a month by

flooding. The poorest girls in the first school village were trained to sew

school uniforms and now support their families doing so. Each school has

an organic garden and is providing healthy food to students. Come hear

how the Cambodian School Project has changed the lives of both children

in rural Cambodia and the American and Czech supporters who help to

sustain it.