Still recovering from the Khmer Rouge mass genocide, Cambodia has an extremely corrupt government and the education in rural areas is very limited. Cambodia is unique because the intellectuals in society were targeted during their genocide, so their resources tend to be sparse, and most children don’t even complete middle school.

 In our village, Kauk Rovieng, the recently built middle school "The Cambridge School for Cambodia" (www.cambcamb.org) has given more than 286 students the opportunity for education. After a few WAWK executive directors visited the school in March 2011, WAWK decided to dedicate their first major project to helping the children. The students are all very passionate and inspiring, studying whenever they can, as well as taking care of their families, working in their family farms, or climbing palm trees for their limited water supply. All students in the three grades of the middle school squeeze into four classrooms to learn every day. Our library will help the students enhance their education, opening the door to literacy, thus allowing the children to reach their dreams. According to the United Nations, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty if every child had basic reading skills.

Built in spring 2012 and officially dedicated in July 2012, our library gives the students of Kauk Rovieng a place to study, and a source of books for them to study with. These books include English picture books, textbooks for studying English and Khmer (the official language of Cambodia), as well as a few novels in Khmer. Our hope is to enrich the knowledge of the students and provide them with learning resources.

Thank you for helping us raise over $15,000 dollars to build a library in the Kauk Rovieng village in Cambodia!