The purpose of the Don Bosco Vocational Center (DBVC) is to provide technical education to disadvantage youth of the provinces of Kep, Kampot and Takeo,a rural region with poor conditions and the lack of opportunities for young people to continue professional studies.
From the many areas of technical education that modern Cambodia requires for its development and its war on poverty, DBFC chose in Kep to concentrate in intellectual skills like social communication (audiovisual production, web development and journalism), IT, secretarial administration, eco-tourism, house keeping, front-office and fine art.
The school will open in October 2011 with the section of social communication (journalism, computers, English, audiovisual and web development.) The first group of students - 15 men and 5 young ladies - were selected from the applicants for the Don Bosco Technical School of Sihanoukville.
Please follow this link in Khmer and this link in English for more information.
Please help children and young people to get education. This is the best way to fight poverty in a country like Cambodia.
Donate to projects like the Don Bosco Vocational Center of Kep.
We are now setting two new projects of technical education for unprivileged rural youth in Kep (donboscokep.org), south of Cambodia and a technical school in Stung Treng (north of Cambodia, near the Laos border.) We are going to need a lot support for these two new challenges.
1. The Don Bosco Vocational Center (DBVC) in the National Park of Kep, is intended to open a space of technical education in intellectual topics like social communication, secretarial, front office, house keeping and fine arts for young people from the rural provincesof Kep, Takeo and Kompot, places with very limited access to professional education. Takeo, for example, is a very poor region and many of its young people migrate to Phnom Penhto look for any kind of jobs, including prostitution. As the school is just at the middle of the National Park, I want to stress also the topic of ecology, a very sensitive matter in a country willing to overcome poverty, but putting in danger the environment. We are going to start in October with a first group of 20 students (15 males, 5 females) in the areas
of communication, web development and audiovisual production, while we preparing the school for the other sections to be opened in 2012. We need funds now to create the project ofthe fine arts and representative arts section (it will be the first art school for unprivileged youth) and also I plan to build some bungalows to open a space of practice for the students of front office and house keeping, while expecting to gather some incomes for the house. We have also problems with water and electricity. We need more tanks and to cover the electricityexpenses, which cost has increased in Cambodia without mercy for charitable organizations like Don Bosco. Just today I got the bill for this monthin 165 US dollars, but it will increased after October with the sections running.
2. The project for Stung Treng comes after the governor of that northern province offered to Don Bosco some hectares of land in order to build a technical school. Don Bosco accepted. In the beginning they want to give it, but we decided that it is better to buy to avoid future confusions. The region is undeveloped, though it is now well connected to Phnom Penh by a good condition road (the same that goes to Laos.) There is a big problem in the region since the dams built without a proper ecological impact have affected the life conditions of the fishing villages in the area causing a consequent lack of fish and aridity. The region (with Ratanakiri Province) is the home to several indigenous groups, most of them living in poor conditions. Although indigenous children can get to basic education, most of them cannot join superior levels. They are obliged to emigrate to Phnom Penh, meaning to join any kind of job.A technical school in Stung Treang means a great opportunity for young people from that area. We need a lot of funds to make it real.
3. This year the Don Bosco Technical Schools of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville received together more than 2,500 applicants (50% more than 2010). We noticed an increase in the number of female applicants (40% more than last year), a meaningful increase in the number of applicants with 12th grade (98% of applicants), 50% of the applicants were orphans of both parents, one parent or abandoned, 70% were farmers from Cambodian rural areas with very low living conditions (like the provinces of Takeo, Prey Veng and Svay Rieng), we got the first two indigenous Cambodians that will study communication at Don Bosco Kep, coming from northern Ratanakiri province, near the Laos and Vietnamese border, there was also a request from an organization working with deaf youth to see the possibilities that deaf students could apply to Don Bosco (our answer was positive, but they decided to wait for 2013 in order to prepare the conditions for it.)
From those more than 2,500 applicants, we could accept only 500 new students in both technical schools of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. It means that more than 2,000 youth could not join the school and most of them have not possibilities to join another center. It means that the Cambodian population is growing with the social inequality gasp. Everything is centralized in Phnom Penh. There are private universities everywhere, with costs that can be covered only by middle income families, but letting out too many youth from rural areas and unprivileged urban communities.
Technical schools like Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville and now Kep, need to open more capacity. In Sihanoukville, for example, we can attend only 600 students. I think we need to double the capacity in order to attend more young people. But we need a lot of funds to do so.
My Skype is Albeiror24.
You can get photos from my Facebook (Albeiro Rodas), from our websites (donboscokhmer.org, donboscokep.org, donboscopoipet.org, donboscosihanoukville.org, donboscohotelschool.com) and from my Picassa albums (Albeiror24).
Thank you very much for your attention, Yours sincerely,
Albeiro Rodas
Manager DBVC Kep, Cambodia
