Study Tour to Cambodia
Dates: Sept. 17 (Mon.) – 22 (Sat.), 2007
Place: Siem Reap Province, Cambodia
Participants: 23 from 9 UNESCO associations
Shotaro Kinpara, youth member of Meguro UNESCO Association
From Meguro UNESCO Association three of us, Masumi Saito, Mitsutoshi Masuda, and myself, were chosen as UNESCO Movement Promotion Committee members. Mr. Masuda, however, was not able to participate in the study tour to Cambodia due to unavoidable circumstances.
On Oct. 19, after returning home, I visited Iwate Prefectural Daito High School in the capacity of a member of the UNESCO Movement Promotion Committee, and talked in front of the whole school of 450 students about the “Terakoya” community learning center (CLC) in Kok Srok Village, which had left a deep impression on me. Thefollowing is a summary of what I said.
The Terakoya CLC in Kok Srok is aiming at “management without relying on assistance from others”. What approach will make it possible for them to run their center “without relying on assistance”? In fact there are two methods they are using (or rather, trying to use). One is “microcredit” – lending money to villagers at low rates so that they can utilize the interest they will receive later to run the center. The other is “vocational training”, which is still in the planning stage: when a person trained at the center to become a barber starts on his own, he will be expected to give a certain percentage of his income to the center.
This CLC was opened only recently in July this year. Yet the enthusiasm of its steering committee members and the cooperative attitudes of villagers made me believe that their dream of running the center without assistance would come true in the not-too-distant future.
Cambodia depends on international aid for most of its national budget. They rely on assistance even to protect people’s lives from landmines and unexploded bombs. CLC aiming at self-support could be a clue to the self-sustaining development of Cambodia.
I hope the spirit of self-reliance will prevail in Cambodia. It will certainly take time. I have learned in this study tour that Terakoya is not merely a place to teach how to read and write or to serve as a library and a meeting hall, but it could also serve as a starting point for the development of their country.