Khmer Braille
December 5th
Krousar Thmey, like many other NGOs in Cambodia, was founded by a foreigner – in this case Benoit Duchâteau-Arminjon, who was jolted into action twenty years ago when he witnessed the plight of Cambodian children at refugee camps on the Thai border. He gave up the job he had just started in Bangkok and founded ‘The New Family’. One of the children he was helping was blind, and asked him for help. This is why Krousar Thmey first pioneered what has become an outstanding programme for deaf and blind children in Cambodia. They also developed and now publish Khmer Braille.
Because the Cambodian Prime Minister is blind in one eye, this NGO in particular caught his attention and as a result, Krousar Thmey has gained support at a national level and is instrumental in helping to create government policy for the disabled.
To be disabled in Cambodia, as is also the case in India, is often seen as a sign of punishment for faults committed in a previous life. Prior to Krousar Thmey, no facility existed to help disabled children in Cambodia.
I met with the new Director of KT, a Cambodian, brought up and educated in France, Auray Aun. His father, who forsaw what would happen had led his young family out of the country by foot before the Khmer Rouge took over. Like many other Cambodians who escaped the genocide, Auray always wanted to come back, work and help to reconstruct his country.
Auray takes me to see the recently built school for deaf and blind children. It is made up of several large buildings and is painted bright yellow. It cost around a million dollars to construct. There is the sound of plinking and plonking which comes from a faraway music room.
We go to visit the classrooms. In the first one, I see one teacher and two students. They are deaf and she is teaching them to speak. In order for them to understand the sound, she does things like tap the back of their hand, blow on the skin of their forearm and I suppose, generally create the physical acoustic context for the right sound to be produced. After 3 attempts, the little boy gets it right. She is very patient and the scene is mesmerizing.
In a second classroom, in total silence, a teacher is drawing on the board and communicating through sign language. It is a balletic experience to watch all the student’s eyes and their hand movements – like trees waving and rustling in a breeze. The teacher is an ex-student of Krousar Thmey and also deaf.
- Girl, age 7, learning Braille
The classrooms for the blind are also very quiet. The only sound that permeates the school is still from the elusive music room. It is rather soothing and I wonder if the deaf children can pick up on the vibrations being transmitted. I am now in a first grade class for Braille and the students are learning their letters. In the next door classroom they are learning to count, using an abacus.
The school also has an IT room and I get a demonstration of JAWS, the software that can talk a blind person through all the manoeuvres required to use a computer and to get online. My interlocutor is so on-the-ball, he belongs in a thriller. I am beginning to feel a bit speechless – standing in a room full of alert students, while the disconnected, American-accented voice of JAWS periodically voices instructions like ‘press enter.’ Auray quickly takes me to see the printing room.
The school also ‘translates’ and produces books in Braille – often one text book requires the equivalent of 3 text books for one Braille translation. KT print around 4000 text books a year.
We leave the school and Auray drives me back to central Phnom Pehn through afternoon traffic. Later I listen to Benoit, their founder speaking on French radio, and it is clear that this is all excellent work done to a high standard.
Krousar ’s other programmes include care for streetchildren and promoting the arts as a means of creating a cultural context for children who have been disadvantaged by birth or circumstance. They directly benefit 3,500 children, which means, including families or extended families, around 10,000 beneficiaries.
The radio interview: http://www.krousar-thmey.org/BenoitEurope1.mp3
I land in Phnom Pehn at 9:30 and zoom to the guesthouse to drop my luggage before bouncing back into a tuktuk and speeding off to the North West of Phnom Pehn to meet with Krousar Yoeung. Sandra spent the day visiting their project work on 2nd December, but we have arranged another short meeting with their Executive Director, Ky Samphy.
It is a simple, fascinating and noble mission enforced by a dedicated, talented team. I leave the centre to visit the “Building” where a workshop is being held in preparation for a performance tomorrow night. “Building” is also the subject of Alnoor’s film and
We leave our Apocalypse Now Guest house bright and early and speed further into the remote countryside to Sre Sdow village and a meeting with Yous Thy, the Director of the Kampuchea Women’s Welfare Action and her team. A chicken runs round the table again and again and again throughout the meeting as though dosed with amphetamines.
We are collected at 8:30 by Sarang Out from Souvann Phoum to spend the day with them visiting schools, community groups and their offices. We are extremely impressed by what we see. Staff are knowledgeable, frank and honest about the challenges they face as well as the successes they have had. The programmes themselves are extremely well run and address the needs of the beneficiaries they serve whether their needs are education, community development or more general support.
visit. The floor is packed with women and children of all ages. Shaven headed old ladies pepper the proceedings. Next to them teenagers and middle aged women gabble excitedly. Babies play with balloons, breast feed and potter about throughout the proceedings. First of all, the convenor is speaking to them about respiratory health; the warnings, the dangers of infection and what to do about it if they believe someone is sick. This then turns into an excited game with girls leaping up and down to the front of the room to paste posters on the wall. It is quite an event! The volume and excitement in the air is high.
Today we travelled (by a circuitous but charming route) to see an organisation called Phuti Kamar and met Chhim Raymong the programme director. He told us about work that the organisation is involved in: the building of a pilot model school, a community based education project near the border with Thailand, a mobile library service, natural resource management near the Vietnamese border, youth centres around Battambang and a new contract to train and enhance public schools.
The next morning we wake up at 7 and gather our things quickly before speeding off again to spend the morning with the Cambodian Children’s Advocacy Foundation in the Bantey Meas District. They are a small Khmer organisation working in 30 rural communities providing preschool education and medical check ups to children. Their ambitions are high and they deliver a portfolio of projects including community development, pre-school education in villages and early education. Their efforts are admirable but I am concerned that focus on one or two areas would serve their efforts better.