Tuk tuk movie theatre engaging kids in Pursat’s rural communities
Raksmey Hong | Publication date 26 February 2019 | 13:47 ICT

Australian Adrian Paschkow started his tuk tuk movie project to put a smile on the faces of children living in remote areas of Pursat province, while also wanting to motivate them to pursue education, using his tuk-tuk cum mobile movie theatre.

“The project does not do any formal education, but the goal of the project is to bring new ideas and thoughts into small communities. We go to five villages every two weeks for informal education, games and a movie shown on a screen on the back of our tuk tuk."

“We want to show kids new possibilities and motivate them to study and learn more by encouraging them to continue with state education,” says Paschkow, a former mechanical engineering technician of 11 years.

Paschkow lived in Indonesia for three years before moving to Cambodia to be with his wife Mayu in 2014, who was then a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) teaching volunteer in Pursat’s education department.

He began volunteering with a local organisation repairing homes in rural parts of the province, with this experience providing him with the inspiration to start his tuk tuk project.

One afternoon when volunteering, a group of village children gathered around him to see the visiting barang (Khmer for foreigner).

Later that day, he led the children on a bicycle ride 5km to a village armed with a projector and a laptop. Word soon spread throughout the village and before they knew it they had over 50 children arrive to see the movie that night.

Seeing the joy it brought to the children, Paschkow and Mayu knew they wanted to make the screenings a regular occurrence.

The couple initially faced many challenges with the lack of electricity in rural areas, as well as their projector not being visible in the bright daylight, meaning they would have to wait until after dark for screenings, riding home in the pitch black.

This led to an unusual but innovative solution; a tuk tuk equipped with a 40 inch television that people can see during daylight and that also served as their ride home at night.
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