World Education, Inc.

Improved Basic Education in Cambodia Program
Despite improvements and achievements in Cambodia's education system brought about by reforms and increased government spending since 2001, significant challenges persist related to access and quality. This is particularly the case for those residing in remote and rural areas, and those marginalized by poverty, ethnic minority status, or gender. The USAID-funded Improved Basic Education Program in Cambodia Program (IBECP) seeks to address these issues of access and quality through an approach that emphasizes holistic programming, stakeholder-driven development, and improved educational relevance and management. This program builds upon the solid experience gained by World Education over the past five years of implementation of the USAID-funded Educational Support for Children in Underserved Populations (ESCUP) Program and the Schools for Life (SfL) Program.

IBECP has been designed with the goal of promoting "better educated youth" and "increased relevance, quality, and access in basic education." Increased access will be addressed through a combination of scholarships, school latrines and safe water, and other enrollment-boosting activities mediated by school grants. Educational quality will be strengthened through interventions focusing on improved curricula in life skills, teacher education, and school management. IBECP will target on schools from a mix of demographic backgrounds including urban, rural, and remote. The program will consistently define educational quality in terms of relevance to the future work place, promoting a concrete curricular focus on employment readiness and other life skills, especially in agriculture. IBECP also seeks to strengthen the capacity of civil society, local government, and local NGOs.

World Education will partner with long-standing local partner Kampuchean Action for Primary Education and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport. World Education has long relied on intensive involvement of counterparts and local partners (including local NGOs) through a working group structure known as Provincial Working Groups. These include representatives from school clusters, school directors, and both district and provincial level offices of education. A national level consultative group will ensure involvement of central-level departments in program implementation. Other IBECP implementation partners include American Institutes for Research, Equal Access, the Khmer Women's Association, Women and Children's Rights Development, Buddhist Social Development Association, the Cambodia Women's Crisis Center, and NGO Education Partnership.

World Education and its partners will work in the three provinces of Kampong Cham, Kratie and Siem Reap. Target schools will include a combination of those from urban, rural, and remote areas. IBECP will also seek to nearly double the number of children assisted by the program with a target of over 100,000 at primary and lower secondary school levels.
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Schools for Life Program
The Schools for Life Program, funded by USAID, will expand on the good practices and lessons learned from the 3 ½-year USAID-funded Educational Support for Children in Underserved Populations (ESCUP) Program. The project will continue to address the issues of access and quality of education for marginalized youth in Cambodia through improved school management and educational capacity. A school grant component will offer schools a choice of interventions appropriate to their context and need.

At the same time, World Education will develop a number of new life skills modules focused on workplace readiness and economic participation for youth, with the aim to increase the relevance of education for lower secondary students, thereby improving enrollment and retention through grade 9, where drop-out becomes increasingly commonplace. World Education will continue to work with Kampuchean Assistance to Primary Education (KAPE), and in close partnership with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport. One of the goals for the Schools for Life Program is to demonstrate how school development can be facilitated through a decentralized approach that builds ownership and strengthens governance while promoting cost effective, locally appropriate interventions for scale up in Cambodia's schools.
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Cambodian Living Arts
Approximately ninety percent of Cambodia's performing artists died during the Khmer Rouge regime, a devastating blow to Cambodia's arts and traditions. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, this cultural tragedy was compounded by two subsequent decades of economic hardship, when very few of the surviving master musicians could make a living performing or teaching.

Cambodian Living Arts (CLA)-- formerly known as the Cambodian Master Performers Project (CMPP) -- was founded in 2000 by Arn Chorn-Pond, a Cambodian-American refugee who was featured in the Emmy-nominated movie, The Flute Player.

A project of World Education from 2001 - 2009, CLA is working to revive the traditional arts of Cambodia by pairing master teachers who survived the Khmer Rouge regime with young artists, thereby not only preserving the cultural heritage of Cambodia but also providing economic opportunities for artists.

CLA works towards the vision that Cambodia in the year 2020 will be a country experiencing a cultural renaissance so dynamic that the arts have become Cambodia's international signature. Khmer arts will have become a wellspring of Cambodian strength and resiliency, and a vital source of healing and reconciliation.
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A Quality Approach to Mainstreaming Best Practicies
Since 2002, World Education has worked in Prey Veng Province to develop and implement interventions that aim to increase educational access and retention of vulnerable girls, children and youth aged six to 17 in quality education programs through the EPSSEG and OPTIONS Programs. After five years, evaluations of these programs have concluded that OPTIONS has developed effective models that have the potential for replication on a larger scale and can be sustained through the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) funds. Through the support of UNICEF, World Education is currently focusing on larger scale replication with the aim to mainstream its more effective education interventions under the national Child Friendly School framework and the national Education for All strategy.

The program's four main objectives are to: mainstream a gender-sensitive response; mainstream a holistic approach to developing and implementing local life skills programs; establish a MoEYS coordinated and managed community-based livelihood development model for out-of-school youth; and lastly, to retain at-risk girls and children in need of special protection in upper primary and lower secondary school through scholarship support.
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Green Health Project (2006 - 2006)
Food security and a lack of awareness of basic nutrition continue to be problems in many parts of Cambodia, and the resulting poor health and malnutrition adversely affect the development and school attendance of children. The goal of the Green Health Project is to achieve sustainable improvements in the quality of life of children and their families in poor rural areas through better diets and more effective participation by children in education.

Since 1998, World Education has been working in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport and the Cambodian National IPM Programme in developing, implementing, and evaluating interactive educational programs for rural school children with a focus on sustainable agriculture, environmental protection, and food security. The Green Health Project takes the Environmental and Life Skills Education Program into the fields of vegetable production and nutrition education for children in upper primary schools. Project activities are replicated in villages surrounding the school with participation from farmers and their families. The project revolves around Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Field Schools and include a focus on community-school linkages and on teacher and farmer training.

The Green Health Project is being implemented in three districts in Prey Veng Province during this two-year pilot phase. Six communities will see nutrition and vegetable IPM local life skills programs and community demonstration gardens in year 1. Year 2 will focus on scaling up project activities with the number of targeted communities increasing to 15. Funding is provided by the Food Security Initiatives Fund, a joint Canadian International Development Agency/Royal Government of Cambodia fund managed by the Canadian Cooperation Office.
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Cambodia Educational Media Initiative
The Cambodia Educational Media Initiative (CEMI) promotes the use of a range of media to strengthen current efforts in Cambodia to promote quality education for youth of all ages.

The Initiative brings together two institutions with a strong commitment to building capacity to promote local responses to local issues. WGBH, one of the premier public radio and television institutions in the United States, focuses on high quality programming backed up by teacher professional development, community education and outreach. World Education focuses on formal and nonformal education and health programming for Cambodian youth and their families as demonstrated through its nearly 16 years of work in Cambodia.

Under this Initiative, there are currently five areas of inter-related activities, each at a different stage of development. These include:

1. Introducing media that supports early childhood education (e.g., Sabai Sabai Sesame, and Peep and the Big Wide World, with materials for parents, parent educators and teachers of young children);
2. Developing and using media in teacher education programs to support at risk children;
3. Promoting greater understanding of youth migration issues in Cambodia;
4. Producing Khmer translations/adaptations of media that support greater understanding of public health issues in Cambodia (e.g., RX for Survival); and
5. Promoting greater interest in and the preservation of Khmer performing arts (reinforcing the efforts of programs like Cambodia Living Arts and the broader application of the performing arts in promoting health, education and personal safety).
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Sabai Sabai Sesame
A number of studies indicate that television ownership among rural Cambodian households has nearly doubled since 2000 and that at least 85% of the population regularly watches television. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of television in Cambodia makes it well positioned to help compensate for the limited ability of disadvantaged young children to access appropriate early learning opportunities.

World Education, the Educational Television Corporation (ETC), and WGBH have adapted the US educational TV series, Sesame Street, for Cambodian broadcast. The Khmer version of Sesame Street, known as Sabai Sabai Sesame, adapted with culturally appropriate content, was broadcast on television in Cambodia from December 2005 to the end of 2006, and targeted the pre-school and primary school age group.

The show features animation, live action films and Muppet (puppet characters) segments in a 'magazine format' designed both to entertain and to introduce a range of academic and social messages. Each of the program's segments presents a single educational goal, either cognitive or socio-emotional, such as number and letter recognition and labeling, tolerance, or teamwork skills.

Sabai Sabai Sesame also features original opening theme music in the traditional Cambodian style and a new film produced locally by a Cambodian crew. In addition to getting Sabai Sabai Sesame on air, World Education's Cambodia Educational Media Initiative (CEMI) utilized the initial eighteen-month development period to test out the underlying hypothesis upon which all work is based: that the production of children's educational television in Cambodia can result in specific learning gains for young children.
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Using Educational Television to Promote School Readiness in Cambodia
There is a growing global recognition of the importance of early childhood education. In Cambodia, however, most children's access to quality early education remains extremely limited, and the most socio-economically disadvantaged children come to school the least equipped with the necessary competencies. Studies have shown that high-quality educational television shows, such as Sesame Street can help pre-school aged children gain certain cognitive and socio-emotional competencies. In addition, research has suggested that from watching educational children's shows, teachers and parents change their attitudes and practices around fostering young children's learning. In Cambodia, where television is now ubiquitous even among the most disadvantaged, television is an overlooked early education opportunity for children.

World Education, the Educational Television Corporation (ETC), and WGBH-TV have adapted the US educational TV series, Peep and the Big Wide World, for Cambodian broadcast. Peep is the first curriculum-based, locally adapted television program which targets Cambodia's preschoolers (children aged 3 to 8). Each half-hour episode of Peep contains two animated stories in which the characters explore a phenomenon in the world around them, such as water, light, or gravity. Following each animated segment is a short film featuring Cambodian children and parents investigating the same phenomenon at home or in their community.

Peep models inquiry, nurtures curiosity, and encourages discovery learning. The humor of the show appeals to adults and it models concrete examples of how they can help their children engage in hands-on learning. Peep is broadcast nationally on one of the most frequently watched stations in rural Cambodia.

Peep was selected by the Ministry of Education and Youth Sports, the National Advisory Group for Children's Educational Television, and World Education to be adapted for Cambodian children because of the alignment between Peep's curriculum and the National Learning Standards for Children Aged 5 and 6. In addition, accompanying materials are being developed with the Ministry for use by community Parent Educators in nationwide parenting interventions. In this way, the TV show and the support materials are tools in Cambodia's efforts to promote the school readiness of young children.
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Scaling-Up Pre-Service Teacher Training for HIV and AIDS Education Project (2005 - 2006)
The growing HIV/AIDS epidemic puts the lives and futures of the youth of Cambodia at great risk. With more than 50% of Cambodians under the age of 20, it remains of vital importance to educate the youth of Cambodia about HIV and AIDS to help them avoid infection. The goal of the Scaling-Up Pre-Service Teacher Training for HIV and AIDS Education Project was to reduce the numbers of HIV and AIDS infections in Cambodia through a comprehensive education program aimed at primary students. World Education aimed to expand the access to HIV and AIDS education for pre-service student teachers in Cambodia and to improve the quality of learning of HIV and AIDS-related information for student-teachers and primary students. The project, which was funded by UNICEF from 2005-2006, was implemented nationwide, at each of the 18 Primary Teacher Training Colleges around the country.
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Life Skills for HIV and AIDS Education (2005 - 2007)
Though Cambodia has achieved recent success in its fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS, the disease continues to pose a very real threat, and the youth of Cambodia may be among the country's most vulnerable. The number of children up to 14 years of age living with HIV increased from 6,400 to 7,300 between 2002 and 2003, and those numbers are likely under-reported.

Building on past collaborative efforts, World Education and Cambodia's Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) partnered together in the Life Skills for HIV and AIDS Education Program (LSHE) from 2005-2007. The initiative reached youth in and out-of-school in eight provinces across the country with a life-skills approach to HIV prevention that also includes peer education initiatives for secondary students and out-of-school youth and, on a limited basis, primary students. The goal of LSHE was to reduce HIV infections among youth in Cambodia, and the primary objectives were (1) to improve awareness, attitudes, and behaviors on the part of youth in regards to HIV and AIDS; and (2) to improve the capacity of MoEYS to design and carry out future interventions related to HIV. World Education's role was to lead the design of the HIV prevention education strategy, and work alongside MoEYS local and provincial level staff who will be primarily responsible for carrying it out. LSHE, which was funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, implemented its pilot phase in one district (Kong Pisey) of Kampong Speu Province. In January 2006, the program scaled up in that province and into seven additional provinces, expanding to 50% of the targeted districts and 100% of the targeted schools, in each of these areas.
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Vulnerable Street Children Program (2005 - 2007)
A significant number of Cambodia's youth face difficulties with poverty, unstable home lives, substance abuse problems, and other factors that lead too many of them to a life on the streets. These children, without the safety net of a stable home and a place in the mainstream of Cambodian society and culture, often do not attend school and are forced to eke out a living through any means at their disposal, including selling newspapers, shining shoes and working in private businesses such as restaurants and shops, to the more unfortunate who turn to commercial sex work or crime to survive. For many of these children, the lack of stability in their lives means they lack access to basic information to keep them healthy and protect themselves from diseases such as HIV and AIDS.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), in recognition of the importance of reaching this population with HIV prevention education, entered into a partnership with World Education and Mith Samlanh to deliver the Vulnerable Street Children Program (VSCP). The goal of VSCP was to reduce HIV infections among street children in Phnom Penh, and the primary objectives were: (1) to improve awareness, attitudes, and behaviors on the part of street children in regards to HIV and AIDS; and (2) to improve the capacity of MoEYS to design and carry out future interventions related to HIV prevention education for street children. With the proper interventions and sustained involvement, these children can be helped to reach their potential and become healthy adults, fully integrated into society. VSCP was implemented by World Education, in partnership with Mith Samlanh, the recognized leader in outreach and rehabilitation programs for street children in Cambodia. VSCP was implemented from July 2005 until October 2007. It was funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development.
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Educational Support for Children of Underserved Populations (ESCUP)
Although the right to a basic education is guaranteed to every Cambodian child in the country's constitution, there continues to be a considerable gap between official policy and reality. Impediments to a quality basic education continue to exist throughout the country, especially in remote areas. The causes underlying this situation can best be understood as a complex interaction between supply and demand-side factors that include teacher shortages, low educational relevance, restrictive access due to direct and indirect costs, and the perceived low value of education by community members, among other factors. The Educational Support for Children of Underserved Populations (ESCUP) program is designed to increase access to and quality of basic education to underserved groups, including the poorest of the poor, disabled children, girls, and minority groups. ESCUP interventions that promote access and quality fall under the three sub-components of teacher education, educational access and quality, and school-community partnerships. ESCUP is being implemented in the provinces of Kampong Cham, Kratie, and Mondulkiri. Funding for the program is provided by the American Institutes for Research and EQUIP 1 under a cooperative agreement with USAID. The program began in April 2005 and was implemented through September 2008.

Read a Feature Story about our work with children in rural areas under the ESCUP project, Rural Communities Take Charge of Children's Education
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HIV/AIDS Prevention - Promoting Healthy Youth (2005 - 2005)
World Education has built on its broad base of expertise in youth-targeted HIV prevention in designing new interventions targeting in-school and out of school youth in Takeo and Pursat provinces. The HIV prevention education strategies combine an emphasis on life skills, non-formal education curriculum development and training.

The goal of HIV/AIDS Prevention for In-School and Out-of-School Youth is to change behaviors and attitudes of youth (ages 15 to 24) related to HIV/AIDS, thereby making them less vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection. The objectives are (1) to improve the quality of learning regarding life skills and HIV/AIDS awareness for youth (2) to increase and enhance school and community support for HIV prevention activities (3) and to increase the capacity of district and community level stakeholders to support HIV prevention activities.

World Education's strategy has three components: IEC and Life Skills for Out-of-School Youth, In-School IEC and Life Skills Training for HIV/AIDS, and Promoting Healthy Youth.

Promoting Healthy Youth entails creating health clubs for in-school youth as a means of getting students interested in the topics of HIV and AIDS through membership and participation in the clubs. Club members will engage in HIV education and outreach activities, community mobilization and IEC development and dissemination.

Where possible, the three approaches are integrated with one another, particularly with out-of-school youth and in-school youth, so that the two groups are working together to prevent HIV among youth broadly, and in the hope that a critical mass of involvement among youth from all backgrounds can encourage greater community receptivity to the issue of HIV prevention.
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HIV Prevention - IEC and Life Skills for Out-of-School Youth (2005 - 2006)
World Education has built on its broad base of expertise in youth-targeted HIV prevention in designing new interventions targeting in-school and out of school youth in Takeo and Pursat provinces. The HIV prevention education strategies combine an emphasis on life skills, non-formal education curriculum development and training.

Funded by HealthNet International, the goal of HIV Prevention for In-School and Out-of-School Youth is to change behaviors and attitudes of youth (ages 15 to 24) related to HIV, thereby making them less vulnerable to HIV infection. The objectives are (1) to improve the quality of learning regarding life skills and HIV awareness for youth (2) to increase and enhance school and community support for HIV prevention activities (3) and to increase the capacity of district and community level stakeholders to support HIV prevention activities.

World Education's strategy has three components: Information, Education and Communication (IEC) and Life Skills for Out-of-School Youth, In-School IEC and Life Skills Training for HIV/AIDS, and Promoting Healthy Youth.

IEC and Life Skills for Out-of-School Youth works with adolescent boys and young men, adolescent girls and young women, and married couples. World Education employs a two-pronged strategy for behavior change among out of school youth. Individualized life skills classes for each of the three groups combine issues of HIV awareness and human sexuality with a range of additional topics highly relevant to the individual sub-populations. Peer education is also carried out among all three youth sub-populations, to provide opportunities for counseling and information dissemination to take place in informal settings. Local communities are to be heavily involved in project implementation.
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OPTIONS: Combating Child Trafficking and Exploitation through Education (2003 - 2007)
Cambodia serves as a country of origin, transit, and destination for both domestic and international trafficking networks. A recent report estimates that 30% of commercial sex workers in Cambodia are under 18 years of age. These girls and women are easy targets for traffickers, unaware of the dangers that lurk behind promises of good employment. They are a living testimony to the link between lack of education and vulnerability. The OPTIONS program was implemented from 2004-2007 with the goal of reducing the number of children, especially girls, who fall victim to trafficking and exploitation. The immediate objective was to ensure that children, especially girls, removed from or at risk of trafficking and exploitation were educated in programs relevant to their needs. OPTIONS worked closely with community networks to identify children who are at risk and provided them with support in formal and nonformal interventions appropriate to their individual needs. Building on the skills of four major partners - World Education, CARE International, The Asia Foundation, and Kampuchean Action for Primary Education - OPTIONS worked in three provinces: Prey Veng, Kompong Cham, Banteay Meanchey, and certain areas of Phnom Penh. The OPTIONS program was funded by the U.S. Department of Labor with additional support from the McKnight Foundation and UNICEF.

Read the following success story about the program: Using Education to Combat Child Trafficking in Cambodia
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HIV/AIDS Education for Youth Project (2000 - 2005)
Cambodia has one of the greatest landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) problems in the world, with an estimated 3,000 square kilometers of land infested with 4 to 6 million landmines. Landmines and UXO threaten the safety of children and adults, particularly in the northwestern part of the country, which experienced heavy fighting during the last three decades of civil unrest and war. To help protect young people from the dangers posed by landmines and UXO, the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports and World Education have been developing and implementing the Mine Risk Education Project for Children since July 2000. Funded primarily through UNICEF, the two and a half year long project will train teachers and school administrators living in the most affected districts to plan and carry out activity-based mine risk education programs for school children, and to organize community based mine awareness activities with a particular focus on out-of-school youth. The mine risk education program will be fully integrated into the official primary school curriculum before the end of the project, so that mine risk education can be taught by experienced teachers and community members to future generations of school children without the need for external assistance.
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Capacity Building Services to Local and International NGOs in Cambodia
Cambodia's human resources were decimated during the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge in the late 70s, and in the following decade of civil unrest and war. Local civil society institutions did not begin to emerge until the early 1990s, after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Given this recent history, a great need exists for programs in human resource development and skills training for staff of local civil society organizations. World Education responds to this need by providing participatory training of trainers programs in a variety of technical sectors, applying the latest in adult education teaching methods and practices to programmatic and organizational challenges in health education, sustainable agriculture, human rights work, community development, and project and organizational management. Over the last five years we have worked with staff of a wide range of Cambodian government agencies, Cambodian and international NGOs (AICF/USA, Khemera, Church World Service, Cambodian Red Cross, Caritas, CHED, CEMP, ADRA, Enfants du Cambodge, etc.) and international organizations such as UNICEF, UNDP, WHO, ILO, FAO, and UNFPA.
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