TUKTUK TAKES ON COVID-19 🥊
In the red corner, weighing in at HUGE, is COVID-19 (aka Corona Virus). In the blue corner the pint sized Team TukTuk. It seems like an unlikely match up but we are doing our bit to help in the fight against COVID-19 this month whilst still creating fun and engaging resources for kids.
As hygiene is part of the school curriculum, the creative team saw a great opportunity to help out. 2 new handwashing songs will be released soon along with a fun activity showing the effects of soap. This may not be the knock out punch, but these body shots should help tire old COVID-19 out.
Adrian & Mayu 🦘👘
THE YEAR OF FOCUS, 2020 GOALS
Do you ever have those moments of utter work obsession? You get into a flow state, and one movement follows another? Well, that's TukTuk in 2020.
We're sharing our goals for the year (and yes, we know it's March already, it was February when this blog was posted) 📋
Click here to read more ⇢
TUK-TERNS GRADUATE🎓
Finding creative professionals in Cambodia can be tough, that is why with both happiness and sorrow, we say goodbye to our 2 creative tuk-terns (Interns), Kheourn and Yieng. Although they finished at the Tukquarters last year, they have been busy on weekends working remotely. This is their first graduation of the year, they both expect to also graduate from Design School mid-2020.
Their amazing work includes printed games, posters and book animations which will be released soon in the digital library. Even though they are leaving the TukTuk nest, they will always be part of the family.
TUKTUK ROLLS INTO NEW VILLAGES 🏡
Recently we noticed in 2 of our villages, that the kids were getting a bit old for our early learning resources so we scouted around to find 2 new villages with more TukTuk appropriate aged kids. And boy did we find some new kids!
The first visit had over 120 people from 1 yr olds to 81 yr olds, everyone turned out for a gawk. Thankfully by the end of the month, we now have a modest 30 age-appropriate kids per village, testing our resources before we put them in the digital library.
KHMER OF THE MONTH
Khmer Word: Dae Leng
"Dae" is "to walk" and "leng" is "to play" so together, it means "going out" (of course). Khmer people use this when they go to far places. If asked "Dae leng?" you may be getting invited to something a little bit different so reply "baht" or "Ja", put your adventure shoes on and immerse yourself in Cambodia.
Khmer Food:
Samlor Chichai(Seaweed Soup)👇
LIBRARY SWITCHAROO TIME 🦘
Every 2 months, we drop by our schools to change the mobile library. Rather than have one giant library in each school, (did someone say expensive?), we split our library across 8 schools.
It's hectic work sorting and swapping up to 4 libraries in 3 hours so lucky we had Jacques and Margriet to help. Teachers train the children to return the books and toys in the right place and most classes are doing well, but for some, it's like a cyclone has hit. Phan Ey has finished making our Cleaning Up song, so after Khmer New Year, we will introduce it to them and hopefully get some better results.
THIS MONTH IN THE VILLAGE 🔷+👃
Activities in TTT for Feb included lessons on body parts followed by shapes. As mentioned in the last TukTalk, "Chu Chu Wa" was a big hit. The last half of the month, we introduced "Shapes".
Magriet prepared a magic box to introduce shapes and then the children had to find the same shapes hidden in books and instruments. We also introduced our new Khmer "Shape Song" which is adapted from a popular English song. The kids had fun singing and playing instruments along to Phan Ey's beats♪
VOLUNTUKER SPOTLIGHT | KAREN 🙌
Our English voluntuker, Karen, joined us at the Tukquarters for 1 month. She worked on our "Measurement of Success" model, which is our framework to monitor the success of our resources. She has also shook a few things up around the office, helping with admin, outreach and charity procedures. With her help, TukTuk now runs like a well-oiled machine (which in fact it is 😄)
We are currently looking for volunteers with the following skill sets to help TukTuk bring educational resources to Cambodia;
If you want to get involved or know someone with skills that could help us spread positive education in Cambodia, hit that link below and say hi (we're friendly, promise).
Get Involved ⇢
TUKTOGRAPHY HIGHLIGHTS 📸