Hello Cambodia Expats Online! This is my first post and i am hoping to get some answers regarding an upcoming project.

My partner and i are currently fundraising to save £15,000 so that we can put together a shipping container 'school' to teach English for free to rural children in Kampot.

We are both TEFL qualified and have taught previously in Vietnam.

We've been gifted the land by a good friend we made when we visited Cambodia, and we are working with a well respected charity to help make the vision a reality.

The plot will be fully irrigated with toilets and kitchen, we are also hoping to feed the children at least once a day.

We have a good support network at home and this combined with good social media management means we will be receiving enough donations to hire a full time Khmer teacher to work alongside us, as well as allowing us to keep on top of supplies and our own frugal living expense

This is completely non-profit and will be operating as a charity venture.

I was hoping that because the land is being given to us and their is no profit, we will not have to pay tax on the school.

Everyone here seems much more in tune with Cambodia rules/regulations, i just wondered if there is anything about our plan that is shortsighted. Any advice that will help us being hindered at a later date would be much appreciated!

I am happy to answer any questions, i would appreciate interrogation level questioning just to make sure we haven't missed anything



A full website with more information will be completed shortly.

Our page is www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ruralschoolcambodia.

After seeing a few related pages, i would like to clarify: We have NO religious strings attached, nor are we trying to push a brand or anything like that! We have just seen an opportunity to do something we feel passionate about that we can build from the ground up in a beautiful country.

What money are you going to live on?

Our accommodation will be free, and we have savings outside of the £15000. A small part of monthly donations will go to us to keep our heads above water and allow us to continue working hard. We will also subsidise our income with bar work and weekend tours through the guesthouse we are working with.

Great plan, I know from first hand from my GF what education can do for a poor girl from a orphanage!

Good luck!

I really admire your intentions...however I'm cynical it will succeed.

As soon as you start educating and feeding students for free (I presume) things will start going bad, people will attend just to freeload, not because they want/need education. You'll have relatively well-off families sending their kids to you. In addition, you assume you won't pay tax. FAIL. You will need to register the school, and your NGO, and that costs money.

I suggest you visit PSE or Hagar, two highly-respected and successful NGOs who do something similar but on a grander scale. They can tell you the kind of problems they face, for example they have to employ social investigators who check that the poor families are in fact poor...be aware

As others have commented, there may be many issues and hurdles to cross. My comments are not a criticism of your dream, more to make you think on possible problems:

We've been gifted the land..

What does that mean? Are you Khmer and allowed to own land? If not, what you mean is that a Khmer person has lent you the land, (and may want you off his/her land at a later date). You should get a rock-solid lease contract for that land.

I'm in Myanmar, not Cambodia, but I think similar rules apply. You will need to register your school with the relevant authorities, your school buildings may have to meet certain requirements (size etc), and probably you need to be able to provide a long-term land lease contract to demonstrate that the school cannot be kicked off the land.

A small part of monthly donations will go to us to keep our heads above water and allow us to continue working hard. We will also subsidise our income with bar work and weekend tours through the guesthouse we are working with.

So no monthly donations means that you will drown? IMHO, you need to have a relatively solid living income that is completely independent of the school donations.

You're TEFL-qualified. Why not get paid teaching jobs at a local school and run your charity school as a separate effort that is then somewhat protected from your own ups and downs and financial income.

Although I don't run a charity school in Myanmar, I do run my own 'one-man-band' charity effort to support a number of local schools and orphanages with teaching and learning resources, such as school books, posters, dictionaries, computers and educational software.

But I also work as a teacher at an international school. My charity is funded by donations and some income from my teaching job. Have a look at www.TeacherSimon.org or www.facebook.com/TeacherSimon.org

OP, there's so many pitfalls down the road you are intending to go, and you will fall in each and every of them it seems, since you seem pretty unaware about the local situation.

Do what's been said above, and contact NGO's with experience. You should do that in the first place before even considering collecting stuff to put in your container.

Some pitfalls....

1. Children attending just for a meal.
2. Children attending every now and then when it suits them or their parents, not actually learning anything but slowing down learning if attending.
3. Resources rapidly disappearing, only to find out they end up being sold in the market. Children will sign up just to receive a goodie back with resources.
4. Children from middle class or even rich families attending.
5. Resistance from private schools close by can make life pretty difficult.
6. Dealing with the local, provincial and national offices of education. You can NOT just start a school. Arrange all documents before even hiring a container.
7. Children dropping out of state school to attend your school.
and so on.

Shipping containers are very uncomfortable to work out of in a climate like Cambodia’s. As a temporary solution I got some old ones that we had sitting around our site on a sugar estate in Africa renovated and converted for office use as we were running out of building office space as we expanded. Even with fans around people’s desks and locating them in a partially shaded area it wasn’t a pleasant working environment, at least I think that’s why my staff were asleep half the time.

OP, why not do something along the lines of my charity in Myanmar. I don't run a school (because of the many pitfalls and responsibilities mentioned in this thread).

Rather, my efforts support existing government schools, monastic schools and orphanage schools. I visit each school, understand the status of the school (number of students, abilities, resources, number of teachers, teaching skills etc).

Then I work out a support plan specific for that school, in terms of what type, what level and how many school books are needed, what resources I can provide to assist the teachers, what can be done to allow more local kids to attend that school.

I then follow up every few months to check that the equipment that I have provided is actually benefiting the school, (and hasn't been stolen or locked in a cupboard) etc.

In this way, I can hold down a full-time job, and still do a charitable activity that makes a real difference to many school kids, not just a few dozen (that would be the case in your project). My charity model is very efficient from a funding point of view because I don't 'throw mud at the wall and hope some sticks', which would be the case if I just donated the same box of books etc for each school. I only donate what the students need, as appropriate for their age, subjects studied, abilities and needs of their teachers.

Because I don't run a school, I have no problems about regulations for establishing and running a school.

If my income/donations fall, then my charity efforts can go 'quiet' until better times. That works fine, because the schools already have my resources and I only have to provide additional resources if there are new students, or if there are new grades or subjects.

So in this model, I can continuously expand the network of schools that I support, meaning more and more students (and their local teachers) benefit.

I'm not allowed to live in a house in Naypyitaw (local police rules...). so my hotel room is my office, with colour printer, laminator, book binder, scanner and boxes for each school that I slowly fill up with the specific books and software for that school.

So... you could do likewise and use that land and shipping container as your office and resource store, and then reach out to deserving schools and students in your region.

Believe me, it is far less stressful to operate using my charity model than the one that you propose