On November 1, 2016, Kang Han began her secondary education in Xavier Jesuit School in Cambodia. The 12-year-old girl is a scholarship student and one of the 34 students in the new school’s first Grade 7 class.
Xavier Jesuit School is located in Phnom Bak village outside Sisophon in the remote Banteay Meanchey Province. Han comes from an extremely poor family in a deprived village near the Thai border. The Jesuit Service Cambodia (JSC) Metta Karuna programme had helped her complete primary school in her village. Without a scholarship she would not have been able to continue her education to secondary level.
In the first month, her classes were held in a classroom in the Community Learning Centre building that is the first component of the Xavier Jesuit School Project. This building is where educational programmes are held for the children and youth of the surrounding villages and schools particularly those who are in danger of dropping out of school or who have already dropped out. At the start of the second month, Han and her classmates moved to the newly constructed primary school classrooms towards the rear of the campus. These classrooms will be used to house the secondary school (and the primary school) for the next two years.
Han lives with the six other girls in the scholarship programme in a small rented house not far from the school with one of the teachers, Ms Or Savin, who is also now their guardian.
At the end of the second month, Han experienced her first crisis. Her mother had fallen sick at home and wanted Han to return to take care of the children of her older brothers and sisters who are all away working in Thailand.
Many children in our kindergarten and primary school are taken care of by their grandparents or aunts and uncles. In Cambodia, globalisation has enabled freer travel and higher salaries abroad but it has had a tough impact on traditional family life. Han was only able to remain in the school because of a rapid intervention by Hom Vicheka, the JSC Coordinator of the Metta Karuna programmes, and Phon Sonai, Programme Manager of the Xavier Jesuit School Project, to provide extra support to her mother in this time of crisis.
Life is hard at the bottom of the social ladder in Cambodia. So Han and her fellow scholarship students can expect to face other crises as they pursue their secondary studies.
The commune and village chiefs have already expressed their appreciation of the Xavier Jesuit School education programmes by bringing their grandchildren to the kindergarten each morning. Lucia Wong, a lay missionary from Hong Kong, has spent the last three years training the primary and kindergarten teachers so that they can now teach effectively on their own. Their transformation from passive and retiring country girls to joyful and confident modern teachers witnesses to the power of Ignatian pedagogy humanly and culturally applied. Fr Quyen Vu SJ, Vice-Director of the education project, has pointed out that the pedagogy in Cambodia relies on rote learning which does not encourage critical thinking or imaginative thought or action.
Many JCAP experts from outside Cambodia have offered helpful advice to the School Leadership Team as the project evolves. The five key words guiding the architectural evolution of the project are Happy Learning Community, Khmer Village, Safe, Silence and Nature. The revised master plan incorporates these key words into the layout, allowing a silent natural space and sacred circle of trees as the heart of the project, and allowing each school building to open out onto views of the river and countryside.
The Teacher Resource Centre will be the fourth component to be developed after the Community Learning Centre, Primary and Secondary Schools. The Primary School project includes our small school in a second campus in the adjacent poor village of Dey Lo where the children have already reached Grade 2 of primary school after two years of kindergarten. These children will cross over from Dey Lo to attend Grade 3 in the new primary school classrooms in the large campus in Phnom Bak next year.
The initial phases of the project, which include the Community Learning Centre, the Primary School and the multi-purpose hall, have been funded by generous donors in Korea, Japan, Singapore, Germany and many other places. The next phases will include the construction of the Middle and High Schools.
The school motto is “Dare to Dream of a Brighter Future”. Thirty years ago, an old Jesuit priest had advised Fr Ashley Evans SJ, Director of the project, to “dream the impossible dream”. A peaceful, just and democratic Cambodia is still a dream but it is a lot closer now than 30 years ago. Xavier Jesuit School is part of the dream!
Fr Ashley Evans SJ
Director, Xavier Jesuit School Project
Main image: Grade 2 class at Dey Lo