The Cambodia Project

The Cambodia Project (CPI) is a nonprofit organization committed to developing high quality secondary education targeting underserved children in rural Cambodia.

Priorities

* Rebuild the secondary school education system after the loss of many educators during the genocide under the Khmer Rouge, new teachers will be brought for local teaching colleges and the public school system already in place
* Building new schools in rural areas of Cambodia not otherwise served by other schools
* Allow for secondary education no matter what ethnicity, colour or gender

The Cambodia Project Mission:

Encouraged by the support of local governments, The Cambodia Project will work in collaboration with communities to provide innovative and replicable school models, high quality transformative educational resources, and better trained teachers in both the public and private education systems. Based on the CPI model, each school will become financially self-reliant and locally managed by the end of year four.

The sustainable funding model developed by CPI to finance school operation costs is a unique combination of diverse revenue generating streams. For example, microfinance will provide loans for tuition, entrepreneurial graduates and students’ families, thus facilitating economic development in the school areas. Revenues from this program will be utilized for scholarships to subsidize the lowest income students’ tuition. Additionally, CPI’s model combines agriculture and craft revenues, ecotourism, and strategic partnerships with NGOs to provide conditional cash grants to families to ensure student attendance, tuition subsidies, and equitable teacher salaries and incentives.

Implementation and Fundraising

The Cambodia Project is currently undergoing substantial fundraising in the New York City. Corporate support for The Cambodia Project currently comes from Google, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the Susan Hartwig Family Fund, Michiels Architecture & Partners, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, and Raffles Hotels, among many others.

Summer 2008 Field Mission:

Under the tutelage of its founder, Jean-Michel Tijerina, and the Vice President for Strategic Planning, Caroline Rozeira de Mariz, The Cambodia Project is managed by staff located in both New York and Cambodia. Technical advice in several key areas, such as education planning and economic development, is provided to CPI by development professionals and students from leading international graduate schools including Columbia University, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), University of Texas (Austin), and Stanford University.

Cambodia Team Objectives - The summer 2008 in-country field mission will select the land site for construction, recruit local contractors and architects, initiate engineering plans for construction, meet with students and families for needs assessments and local NGOs and businesses in exploring revenue generation options for sustainability, research Khmer curriculum for secondary education and teacher professional training, meet with pertinent government officials as well as local and international NGOs for research and partnership exploration in regard to education and economic development, and present a medical needs assessment for the school community.

Stateside Objectives - From New York, the U.S. mission is developing a financial plan and accounting structure for the organization. They are working with business professionals advising The Cambodia Project in preparation for the fall gala, reaching out to and meeting firms for corporate social development, and expanding our capital campaign and fund raising strategy, marketing and brand development. The New York team also serves in research support capacity to the in-country staff for education programming, economic development, engineering and healthcare needs.

External links

* [http://www.thecambodiaproject.org The Cambodia Project's web page]
* [http://www.thecambodiaproject.org/dev/web/page.php?id=38 The Cambodia Project FAQ]
* [http://www.thecambodiaproject.org/dev/web/page.php?id=46 The Cambodia Project Team]