The Cause

In most communities, people learn by ‘osmosis’. Individuals learn from interacting and collaborating on tasks with one another. However, hardships can disrupt this process and war or economic distress can prevent an entire family, or an entire generation from learning a trade, or a skill that can help a family thrive instead of survive.

Last but not least, formal education can be linked to social and professional advancement in some communities . But no matter where, whether at a rural school West Africa, or at a school in a major European city, early childhood development, is important.

[Media: episode 3 + Luke video]

Often, essential skills must be learned outside of the home to build leadership skills. This is the most long term and critical investment to be made in any community.

It is with these concepts in mind that Community First has developed its local school support program which includes activities ranging from literacy to school farming, and its various vocational training programs for continuing education.

Our Work

Community First’s very first project in rural Cambodia consisted in empowering the people of Sambour through education. At the time, villagers deeply concerned by the state of their children’s school and decided to team up with changemakers based in the United States to develop a plan to change the reality the students had to face every morning.

Community First built the bridge between the villagers of Sambour and their supporters by helping coordinate the construction of a brand new school building, and creating a school agricultural program that would provide at least three meals a week to the poorly fed children.

Since 2009, our school support agricultural projects were refined and scaled to their breakeven point. Meanwhile, we have replicated it at other schools to help provide a sustainable source income for the schools.

The vocational training project brought the sewing and tailoring skills to tens of villagers in Sen Sok who are now marketing their skills as qualified workers for hire of independent entrepreneurs.

Currently, Community First is developing a continuing education program for the lacquer harvester of the villages Prolay in order to help them improve their livelihood by raising the quality of their products and sales income.

What you can do

CONNECT / GET INVOLVED

Your school or educational institutions
with the forgotten communities of rural Cambodia
by learning about and developing aquaponics technologies