WriteOn is an international creative writing competition run by Peace Corps Volunteers. Students from 6th grade up to university level can participate. They choose from a list of prompts and have 1 hour to write a response in English without assistance from dictionaries/teachers/the Internet, etc. Essays are judged on creativity, not grammar/spelling.
In preparation for the competition, PCVs focused their lesson plans on improving the English writing skills of their students. After a lot of hard work and fun, several schools had the chance to submit their stories in the last week of February. Congratulations to all students that participated in this year’s competition!
Peace Corps volunteer Eric, Mr. Sarom, and their students planting new trees for their school
Throughout the academic year, Peace Corps volunteer Eric and faculty members at his school discussed the idea of initiating an environmental secondary project at their school. Eventually, one of Eric’s counterparts, Heng Sarom, agreed to a project idea that involved planting tree saplings around the school. Within a few weeks, Mr. Sarom gathered tree saplings from his personal farm, brought them to the school, and had several classes come together to plant the saplings during their agriculture/labor class. By the end of the week, around 100 new saplings were planted inside and around the outside of the school! The intended goal of this project was to promote the importance of taking care of the environment, increase student’s knowledge on the lifecycle of trees, and empower students to take responsibility of their school. Within time students at their school will be able to take a break under the shade of their beautiful trees!
This is Dalinn. She is 18 years old and is in her first year of studying to be a primary school teacher. She saw a need for some of her classmates to improve their English, so she began teaching them on her own in the evenings. She teaches anywhere from 6-12 of her classmates, 5 days a week! When I asked her why, Dalinn told me, “I want to help them with my ability. I am not very good at English, but I can help them with what I can, and I am very happy to help.” I was so excited to see her take initiative to do this and to guide the students who may have had less experience with English than their classmates.”
A tenured professor of 18 years and an Associate Dean at the highest level of The University of Texas at Austin, I quietly started my application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer late one evening in 2008 after attending a friend’s memorial service, the sixth such service in a two year timespan. A switch was flipped for me during the after service routine of raising a glass in honor of our deceased friend with comments of our needing to live life better, taking more time with family, time to have adventures and to move outside of our comfort zones. Little did I know, my response to this loss-based inflection point would subsequently change my life and my social work career trajectory for the next 10 years.
Many months later, after completing a mountain of paper work, paying off my last student loan (only because I could afford to), medical appointments poking and prodding, a criminal background check, packing up and selling my house, shopping for tropical clothes and patiently answering questions from family, colleagues and friends of why I would leave such a privileged life, I boarded a plane to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia on leave of absence from the university.
An African American woman born and raised in a poor inner-city Cleveland, Ohio neighborhood in the 1960s, I boarded that plane holding on to my faith, and with gratitude for a clear sense of self, identity and purpose. I had taught courses focused on navigating intercultural diversity and inclusion power and privilege for almost two decades, and earned more leadership accolades than the average bear, so I was sure I had the basic tools for success. I didn’t have the language, cringed at the idea of being an English teacher, I hate extreme heat, was a germophobe, and I was horribly afraid of everything in nature that crawled and slithered. In sum, I was very different from all but 5 or 6 of my peers on the plane, mostly white, wide-eyed new college graduates ready to take on the world.
In May 2019, Peace Corps Volunteers attended a Project Design and Management (PDM) workshop with their counterparts. The purpose of this workshop was to provide teachers with the resources they would need in order to plan a project at their schools or in their communities.
Recently, Peace Corps Volunteers Sam and Kristin, along with their counterparts, Ms. Phearun and Mr. Saravuth, took the information they learned from PDM and provided their own training for high school teachers in their province. The training was a success with a total of 23 high school teachers in attendance for Kampong Thom’s first Peace Corps Teacher Training. Throughout the two-day training teachers learned about environmental health, youth empowerment, school management and women’s health. These hard working teachers are now prepared to go back to their communities and start turning these ideas into projects that can help develop their schools.
The two-day training emphasized the value of supplemental education in schools & focused on project development through collaboration. Schools created plans for future projects that would help improve the educational experience and wellbeing of their students. In witnessing this, I can say exciting things are coming to Kampong Thom Province.”
Cambodia: More Than Just Angkor 