TukTuk’s Cambodian Charity Work

We are set up to shutdown. Say what?? Yep, that's right, we believe that no charity should plan to be around for the long term and we are not alone either. That is why, all of our projects, and all of our volunteers, work towards the day when we are no longer needed. Currently, we are needed, however, as Cambodian Charity Work is still an essential part of Cambodia's growth. The important goal is to ensure that our work is asked for by the people of Cambodia and is used to empower them.

Our main Cambodian charity work is focused on education, or more specifically working with teachers directly to empower them and improve the education of future generations. We do this by;

• Creating educational resources that are cultural and curriculum aligned.
• Run teacher workshops to introduce new ideas and concepts. (including our resources)
• Include teachers in the conversation - we only provide what they ask for / need.
• All resources created are downloadable and only require locally available cheap resources or no resources at all.
• Empower teachers to create and share their own resources in for all Cambodian teacher's benefit.

We understand that the only way we can help is by empowering teachers to help themselves but what does this really mean?

Basically, we are working to put ourselves out of a job. Success for us is when teachers take over the role we currently play and continue to develop and improve it for future generations. The only thing stopping them now is a lack of access to resources. Not many teachers speak a second language such as English and therefore do not have access to the mountains of information that is available online. We are the bridge that helps teachers to find this information and show them how they can use it.

Research studies by Unesco (Kim and Rouse, 2011) show that over 60% of primary and secondary school teachers received (at most) secondary education. Although 100's of teachers a year are getting teacher training, which is now a 4-year post-secondary degree, the huge increase in population growth has limited the amount that the Government can invest into education. In a separate study in 2010 by UNESCO, Cambodia allocated approximately 50% of its annual budget into education. However, despite this attempt to improve its quality, it was found that 83% of the funds are allocated to operation expenses - which leaves very little funds for schools to provide adequate resources, including teaching materials such as up-to-date books and technology (computers and the internet). The lack of financial support for education in Cambodia leads to the need for more Cambodian charity work - ones such as TukTuk.

Presently, Cambodia still has the lowest ranking within the south-east Asian countries for the education dimension of the World Bank's Knowledge-economy Index according to UNESCO.