HOW IT ALL STARTED

The settlement of Bech Khlok belongs to the village of Alongtrach, which is located in western Cambodia. The village is difficult to reach as it is not connected to the public road network. The villagers have no access to clean drinking water or electricity.

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In 2012, the villagers of Bech Khlok developed a vision, which was to give their children a chance to a better future. With the limited resources available to them, they built two makeshift classrooms and two men from the village started to teach the children on a volunteer basis. A little later a young teacher joined who was paid by the government. Still, providing decent education was a problem because there was hardly any school material and the infrastructure was in a desperate state.

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As the school lacked basically everything, Seed started to provide the necessary school materials. After some provisional improvements to the infrastructure of the existing school, we built the first two new classrooms in 2015 and continuously expanded the school with more classrooms, a large library, a kindergarten, rooms for the teachers, a small kitchen, various sanitary facilities, water tanks and solar panels, a large playground and a school garden.

However, we did not only focus on building the school, but since then we have also ensured that the quality of teaching continuously improves, fill the gaps in the state curriculum with a supplementary offer and make sure that the older students can continue to secondary and high school.

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In this way, we support the reduction of inequalities and injustices in education, both in terms of access and quality.

Sustainable development depends on every child receiving the highest quality education possible. When children have the opportunity to reach their full potential, they become productive adults ready to give back to their communities and break the cycle of poverty.

Malnutrition, dirty drinking water and poor hygiene can lead to impaired cognitive and motor development in children. With a lunch programme for the neediest primary school students, a balanced meal for the kindergarten children, water tanks and water filters for the families, a lot of educational work and help in emergencies, we have contributed a great deal to noticeably improving the children's health condition and thus also their learning and concentration ability.

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Our educational program is a privat-public cooperation. The primary school is run by the government. Seed is responsible for the kindergarten, the library, the English program, the nutrition programme, and the school garden.

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For Seed it is most important that this is a bottom up grassroots project working with locals to identify what is needed and how they can participate and take ownership. Sustainable results can only be achieved when the local community takes full ownership of their own progress.