Highlighting the need for the Community Village in our End of Financial Year Appeal
Ten minutes before the home study time starts at LaValla School in Cambodia 97 students are seated in primary school class groups working on assignments. Any Australian visitors receive an invitation to assist with English and check work. It’s a little competitive for the visiting tutors attention but one soon forgets all around a table have a physical disability. Likewise at sport at 4pm as prosthetic’s are thrown on the side of the swimming pool or students leave their apparatus for Paralympic Volleyball keeping seated on the ground.
Once primary school years are completed for the majority in 3 years of accelerated learning, many are aged 16 to 20 by year 7 in secondary school. I visited the site of the Marists’ and local Khymer staff’s respond to secondary school needs – a community village site for independent living in small houses with a garden patch. I visited to see the land is cleared, a drainage system in place and a security wall constructed. Many donors are assisting in this phase 3, which is the construction of buildings due to start in September 2017.
Words like courage, resilience and joy don’t adequately capture this AMS project’s spirit but it’s wonderful to experience young people being freed of their dependence on others through quality Marist education with a difference.
To find out more about the project please follow this link: MSC Community Village