Koh Ker & Srayang Dormitory

The Ponheary Ly Foundation is named after an amazing woman, Ponheary Ly, a Khmer Rouge survivor, who was a teacher before becoming a tour guide to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. Ponheary and her family made it their mission to make sure the poorest of the local children get an education.
You can read much more about foundation at http://www.theplf.org/ Ponheary was also recently named a CNN "Hero of the Week." http://twurl.nl/553xua

The foundation not only provides uniforms and school supplies, but helps supplement teacher salaries (which are only $25 per month), builds wells and gardens in the schools, buys bicycles for students who live too far away to walk to school, and provides funds for secondary students to go to high school and receive English tutoring.

In primary schools, it costs about $20 a year for the uniforms and school supplies they must have to attend school, but even this small amount is a fortune in a country where many people earn less than a dollar a day. For children to attend secondary school, it's even more expensive, about $700 a year per student if they have to be boarded in another town.

In 2007, before going to Cambodia, we collected donations for the foundation. That money helped enable them to adopt a rural school in the village of Koh Ker, about 2.5 hrs from Siem Reap. We visited this school on that trip and found it in so much need: the kids were sick and malnourished and the most basic needs of food, medical attention and education were not being met.

There have been remarkable changes at Koh Ker School in the last three years. A new classroom building has been constructed, a water filtration system put in (because even the well water had high concentrations of E-Coli), the children have been provided medical care, a breakfast program is in place along with a school garden, and for the first time last year, they had "graduates" from the 6th grade.

As it grows, so do the needs of the school. It has more children than ever before coming to school now that the local families have seen the benefits. For the children finishing 6th grade, the next step is secondary school with the closest one more than 25 miles away. To attend, they need housing because it is too far from home.

We are going back to Cambodia this year to work with the foundation for the beginning of the school year, and to visit Koh Ker again, and would like to raise money to support the girls who are ready to go to secondary school this fall. The land & a small house have been purchased by the foundation & our contribution will go the girl's needs, and to putting in the well, building the latrine and fence, and getting the kitchen set up. To read more about the girls and the plans, please go here http://tiny.cc/hkhp8

Our fundraising goal is to double the amount we raised in 2007, to $5000. The suggestions to the right are just that; suggestions about how much good just a little amount of money can do. All donations are tax deductible and 100% goes to the foundation.

Thank you for helping make a small part of our big world a brighter place.