IRDEP-BB – Two hundred school children in Manaskal village, a very remote area in Kamrieng district of Battambang province will have a new concrete school building of 5 classrooms to study for 2012.
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Mr. Siv Chien, Manaskal Village Chief and Village Development Committee (VDC) Leader, said the construction of the new school building started in March 2011. “This is the result of our efforts,” he said, adding that the Monaskal community spent six year struggling for such a new school.
In late 1990, Mr. Chien recalled that former Village Chief Oum Sao mobilized resources from the community members in the village to build a wooden, thatched-roof school. Because of a lack of study facilities and no teachers, the school was left idle and damaged years later.
In mid 2001, at the request of Mr. Oum Sao, the World Food Programme supported the construction of a new wooden, zinc roof school buildingof 3 classrooms.The first-ever school year of the children of Manaskal started in 2002.
A few years later, the building was getting older and some parts of the walls and roofs started to damage. In 2005, the VDC and School Support Committee (SSC) approached Yumi, Japanese NGO, for a new concrete school building of 5 classrooms. Later a representative of Yumi, accompanied by some district education officials, paid a visit to the school. The Yumi representative said he would send his team to conduct a feasibility study, but nothing happened, according to Mr. Chien.
In February 2006, LWF (now LWD) included Manaskal in its target area. Under LWF’s IRDEP, a series of trainings to improve the capacity of the VDC were provided and community development activities started step by step. Having seen a good opportunity, in early 2007, the community, SSC and VDC made a new proposal to LWF for a new school. As the LWF’s budget was limited and based on the top priority, the proposal of Manaskal community was considered as the second priority, while its neighboring village was in the first place.
Chien said the VDC did not give up. In early 2009, after hearing from LWF field staff based in the village that the Education Ministry had some budgets to support the school constructions, the VDC immediately submitted the proposal to the Education Ministry for a new school building of the same specification submitted to Yumi.
In early 2010, the District Education Office (DEO) informed the VDC that the Ministry accepted their proposal, but later said that the approval was for the neighboring village which already had a school building of 3 classrooms funded by CWS, not for Manaskal.
Chien said after being informed of that the community submitted another proposal asking the DEO to reconsider the urgent need of Manaskal community. Finally, Battambang Provincial Department of Education approved their proposal in late 2010. The construction is expected to be completed in February 2012. The school project cost US$50,000.
“This is the first time that we have made our advocacy successful,” Chien said, adding that the VDC members were more confident in themselves in advocating for their rights after receiving training on human rights and advocacy facilitated by LWF/LWD.
“Before training, we don’t know, we are afraid to ask. But now, our community clearly understood that the government has the obligations to provide public service for the people,” Chien said.
Chea Rom, VDC member, saidthe success came from a close collaboration between the local authority, SSC, and VDC. “Under LWF/LWD’s support, our community has developed a lot,” he said.
Currently, there are six classes (from grade 1 to grade 6) studying under the deteriorated wooden building, according to Mr. Phann Chamnan, Principal of Monaskal Primary School. From 2006 to 2010, the school successfully graduated five classes of primary education. Almost all of them did not continue their study at the lower secondary education level because the lower secondary school is 10km away from their village and most of them do not have bicycles, while some others need to help their parents do the farm work.