China's aid improves education and health for Cambodian children

Five-year-old Sina enjoys playing with colorful toy blocks at kindergarten.

On a quiet morning along the banks of the Mekong River in Cambodia's Kratie Province, 5-year-old Sina is decorating a flowerpot pattern with colorful paper scraps in her kindergarten classroom.

When she and her classmates finish their work, teacher Sum Dany brings out a basket of multicolored toy blocks, raising a stir of excitement in the class. Sina grabs a pile of them and returns to her seat, sharing the joy with her classmates. They sort out blocks by color and build a tower.

"One, two, three," Sina counts in Khmer, and when she places the eighth block, the tower collapses.

"It's okay, let's try again," Dany gently says. "Try the blue ones."

Such classrooms were not commonplace in the past. Only 43 percent of Cambodian children at ages of 3 to 5 could be admitted into kindergarten. Quality education resources were scarce in remote rural areas, and some kindergartens even fell short in fundamental teaching.

"It's hard to teach kids without basic tools. They are unwilling to come to kindergarten. The classrooms are chaotic, making it challenging to manage," Dany admitted.

The change came with the launch of the project to improve education, health and nutrition for children as well as to provide clean water and build fair sanitation facilities in Cambodia's most vulnerable communities. Supported by the China International Development Cooperation Agency through the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) worked with the Cambodian government to supply 1,000 sets of teaching equipment and 6,580 bags of necessities for children's early development as well as water and hand-cleaning devices to 3,290 community kindergartens, benefitting about 82,000 kids.

Thanks to this project, the kindergarten where Sina went was also equipped with various teaching aids, such as entertainment blocks, paintbrushes, whiteboards and textbooks, and sanitary necessities like water purifiers and soap, significantly reducing the workload on teachers.

"The children are especially happy to see new toys and they vie to be the first to play with them. With the soap, they can also develop a habit of handwashing," Dany said.

While playing with these educational toys, children can exercise their creativity and imagination and sharpen their abilities to count and recognize colors. Parents are thus more willing to send their children to kindergarten, resulting in a significant rise in attendance rates.

"Children can complete a top-notch pre-school education through play, which is conducive to their better study and development in the future. This opportunity is notably crucial for those kids in remote areas," said Andrew Brown, chief of communication and advocacy at the UNICEF office for China, who was on a visit to Cambodia.

He observed that China's aid had not only brought tangible benefits to local children, families and communities, but also promoted the existing pilot programs to kindergartens nationwide.

About 82,000 Cambodian children like Sina got a more hygienic learning environment and better early education thanks to this "small yet smart" project.

"When I first sent Sina to kindergarten, she would always cry, and sometimes the teacher would ask me to stay in the classroom with her," said Sina's mother, who felt relieved about her daughter's transformation. "She is now very talkative and lively. I can leave her at kindergarten and go home to do farm work and chores with peace of mind."

Improvements in community kindergarten facilities and teaching quality alleviated the childcare burden on mothers, allowing them to return to agricultural production and social activities. This, in turn, has helped improve household incomes and given families renewed hope for their children's future.

"When parents see that their children enjoy going to school and are eager to learn, they become more proactive in sending them to class," Andrew said.

Sina was expected by her mother to become a teacher after she finished her education.

"A good job can save her from the farmland labor," Sina's mother said.

In the afternoon, Sina's mother rode a motorcycle to bring her home.

"This is my flowerpot. I colored and decorated it. Is it pretty?" Sina asked, placing her craftwork on a wooden table.

"Very pretty," Sina's mother said grinning.

Then they started to practice writing Khmer script, as Sina murmured a nursery rhyme.

A box of colorful toy blocks, a bar of soap and even an energetic class strongly serve the needs of Cambodian children and their mothers, even though they are not something grand and eye-catching.