New building

Within the same year, the local Troey Koh villager gave us "notice" to relocate our English program because they needed the space to build additional living quarters for their son's new baby on the horizon. We brainstormed options and ended up leveraging Synath’s mother-in-law’s land on the rice field – another organic idea that snowballed quickly. 

The construction required a significant number of dirt trucks (~80 trucks) to level the foundation on the rice field. English classes continued at the villager’s home until the new facility was built, and timing couldn't be better.

By November 2016, a new school facility was ready – now a dedicated space for the students to come and learn English. The canopy and washroom were subsequently added to the building. (The washroom was actually what the students had wanted most, so some kids pitched in to paint the washroom after it was built).

Inception

Mark was in Cambodia and happened to stumble across a free English school run by the Buddhist Library charity (~12.5km outside of the province of Kampot). There, he met a local Troey Koh teacher, Synath. After getting to know Synath, Mark suggested an opportunity for the kids on Troey Koh to learn English as well since the area lacked such a school. It was an organic idea that snowballed quickly. We didn't have everything figured out but knew this was something we wanted to pursue.

Synath promoted the program through word-of-mouth in the village and found a local villager who was gracious enough to offer their ground floor for the English lessons during the weekends. On registration day, over 50 students aged 9-17 showed up with an eagerness and passion to learn English.

Based on the turnout, we decided to offer two 90-minute classes every Saturday and Sunday. Since we were borrowing the space from a villager, the students helped set up and pack up the tables and chairs at the start and end of each class.

We started an English program in Cambodia in May 2015. It was located in southern Cambodia in the province of Kampot, on Troey Koh (which translates to "fish island"). The objective of the program was to foster sustainability through education, where impoverished kids could learn English for free to improve their chances of getting a good job. The English program, informally named Little Fish English School as it was synonymously with "fish island," was 100% funded out-of-pocket for five years (with some donations from family and friends).

Financial Tracker for the English Program

Expansion

Over time, the English program evolved to three levels of classes – Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. We welcomed new students to our beginner level while advancing the previous beginner level students to the intermediate level. We also needed to prepare the strong students for job readiness. For the advanced level, we planned and designed the curriculum to focus on job-readiness skills in the hospitality industry (since it's prevalent in Kampot and across Cambodia).

As such, our 90-minute classes expanded to Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, held on each day for each level.

Here is a sample chapter of the advanced curriculum that we and our friends had drafted and designed from scratch.

Our Reflections

Since the English program was overseas, we encountered a number of challenges. Here are the top two:

1. Lack of consistent attendance: Due to the students’ socio-economic situations, their parents saw little value in the sustainability model and expected their kids to work/help out with chores at home. The students also had 6 days of regular school every week. We piloted incentives to boost attendance, like occasionally supplying free snacks for our classes, setting up a pen pal program with Toronto students, and offering two students from the class a monthly donation of a 50 kg bag of rice between November 2017 and January 2020, as well as a new bike for them to get to classes. However, with the exception of two students, attendance remained inconsistent for most.

2. Lack of sustained progress: We had weekly touchpoints with the teacher and directed the focus for each level while gathering feedback from the previous week. The beginner and intermediate levels were progressing at a slow pace (due to above issue) and for those that showed progress, it was tough to sustain it. The advanced class did show promising progress and fairly consistent attendance.

We evaluated the overall program and cost after five years. Ultimately, we had to pause the program in January 2020 when the COVID pandemic was declared.

The important thing was that we’d built a legacy in the Troey Koh village and helped improve lives. As we looked back at key moments of the program, we want to share these moments:

• Celebrating the official new school facility (yes, there was a cake!);

• Taking the kids on a sunset boat cruise; and

• Distributing school supplies and toys for the students (twice!).