Cambodia is always a popular destination for our volunteers and our partners working at Treak Community Centre (TCC) are able to provide a welcoming and worthwhile volunteering experience for people with a wide range of skills.

In the spring of 2024 we set up a group placement at TCC for 6 ladies from Kindness Adventures, an organisation from USA and Canada.  They wanted a placement to make use of their practical and artistic skills, and were also able to provide quite a lot of funding.  This enabled Treak to fulfil a long-held dream – a playground for the children at the Centre.  A design was created by the staff at TCC and local builders were employed to do most of the structural work, with the ladies from Kindness Adventures adding their labour to add the final touches.

From the TCC newsletter: ‘…things got moving at the beginning of 2024 with a generous donation from Jax and “the gals” from Kindness Adventures, which enabled us to build a new ball games court, create a safe zone for our smallest children, repair and improve the play equipment in the main play area, and build a miniature Khmer playhouse, complete with slide. This has proved extremely popular with children of all ages (and even with people who long since ceased to be a child!)’

2024 was a challenging year for the school at TCC as they lost some key members of staff.  They tell us: ‘2 experienced senior staff moved on to the next episode of their professional lives: Viphou and Dara, which left a big hole at the top of the organisation.  Nirann had a hard act to follow and has had a steep learning curve.  In addition, Chheur and Srey Rath have had new roles that were initially designed to support Dara.  Several staff have lost close family members and others have had emergency admissions to hospital.’

We have been able to send three volunteers with experience as primary schools teachers – Celia, Zoe and Ellen, to work with some of the newer, less experienced teachers and provide them with invaluable support with teaching methods and classroom management.  They also all led training workshops focusing on their own particular skills such as teaching children with autism and anger management.  We also arranged an e-volunteer placement for Diana – once a week for 12 weeks she linked up with children at TCC to listen to them read. 

In the words of some of the teachers at TCC:

“For me I’ve learned a lot about my teaching, and also how to work well with volunteers. I love working with them because they helped me to improve my teaching, speaking, sharing and also flexibility”.

“(The volunteers) encouraged us to be brave in trying new things and to have confidence in leading the class and teaching techniques. Our teachers gained valuable ideas in teaching and increased their confidence as well.”

We already have our next education volunteer lined up to go to TCC – volunteer Paul will pay a return visit in April and will work on areas of  whole-school management and development with Nirann and other more experienced teachers.

Finally, Treak Creations, the social enterprise set up by Salin with the dual aim of creating employment for local villagers and providing an income for TCC, goes from strength to strength.  As Salin tells us:

“Local women have been trained to make standard items such as dresses, tee-shirts, trousers and shorts. We’ve lent 2 sewing machines so the women can work from home.
In preparation for contacting local businesses to promote our work and place items for sale, a catalogue has been designed and is ready for the printers.
A local hotel asked for 200 pillowcases, which they wanted making from their old bed sheets; a great example of re-using materials.
A local training restaurant ordered 100 crocheted place mats.
We created new shop space in the school office and had some good sales to visiting volunteers.
The priority now is to find ways to market the products locally in Siem Reap, nationally across Cambodia, and internationally.”

Volunteer Linda is currently in Cambodia using her business and financial skills to help Salin develop her plans, and she will be followed by volunteer Helen in March who will help with long-term strategic planning.

So are you interested in using your skills to support TCC?  As you see we can use volunteers with a great variety of skills.  If you’d like to discuss the possibilities email dianne@travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk, and to see more about this project follow this link.