Peter’s Rubbish School

In this month’s blog, I’d like to tell you about the ‘Rubbish School’ in Cambodia and the work one of our Australian Passionists, Peter Gardiner CP, is doing with them.

Late last year, Tom McDonough CP, the provincial of our province, asked Peter Gardiner CP, who is part of our JPIC committee, if he would be willing to spend some time in our PASPAC region, teaching some of our students English. Peter very quickly and happily agreed to this proposal.

So Peter enrolled in a CELTA course (Cambridge English Language Assessment) to teach English to speakers of Other Languages. This is an internationally recognised qualification. Halfway through the course, the pandemic blew up here in Australia, like the rest of the world. Peter managed, however, to complete the rest of the course online.

Because of the current travel restrictions, due to the pandemic, there is no hope at present of teaching face to face, as Peter had hoped to. He has, however, undertaken to do some teaching online, through our newly discovered best friend, Zoom.

Peter acquired one student in Vietnam and spent July and August teaching our Indonesian students. For Peter, it was wonderful to be able to be part of the formation of our future brothers, and see their passion for learning, and ministering to the Crucified.

But typical of Peter’s JPIC interests, he has also taken to bringing the fruits of these studies to some volunteer work in teaching English online.

It was through one of our other fellows, Br. Jim Coucher CP, that his attention was brought to a video that Jim had seen online on the BBC news site concerning Cambodia’s ‘Rubbish School’ where kids pay their tuition with plastic. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-53689175.

Here we are introduced to Kimleng Sang, who is a tour/photography guide in Angkor Wat and Siem Reap in Cambodia. Because of the pandemic, his work dried up, there being no tourists there at the moment. Also their schools are in lockdown. So Kimleng Sang decided to use his free time to start up a little school in his home. He is offering English lessons to local children. They pay their fees by collecting plastic. There is no recycling facility in the country, so what this set up does is that it has two benefits: the kids learn English, and the village gets cleaned up. They clean, recycle and repurpose the plastic into various bits and pieces.

Peter was intrigued and so tracked Kimleng Sang down on Facebook and added him as a friend. At first, he was running classes for older children, then decided to run some classes for the younger children. He advertised for someone to help, so Peter contacted him, and now teaches the children three days a week, for one hour each day.

Peter did check with his friends in Siem Reap (where we have had some pilgrimages building houses for poor rural families) that everything was above board, and okay, which it was.

Each day, Peter prepares a class on various topics, mostly basic words and phrases. He shows some video and then explains the concepts further. Kimleng then takes over, and using the slides and drills the kids in English.

“To be honest, it’s an absolute hoot,” says Peter. “The students are incredibly enthusiastic and willing to learn. The number of students varies, but we have had up to 26 students.”

Peter has found it a tremendous privilege to be involved with the Rubbish School. They are doing great work in improving their environment. And it gives the children an opportunity to learn for the future.

The future for many children, especially rural kids, is pretty bleak in Cambodia. With Siem Reap’s proximity to Angkor Wat, there are opportunities for employment as tour guides, restaurant workers, hotel employees, shop assistants and so on. It gives them an opportunity to enhance their future and their children’s children’s future.

Public education is free by law, in Cambodia, but ‘supplemental’ lessons for English or other extracurricular subjects cost extra ranging from US$5 a class to hundreds of dollars, depending on the school and its location. This could be a steep investment in a country where the average person earns under $1,400.00 a year.

For poor families in remote areas, the children are sent to beg for money to increase their family income, making it difficult for them to justify paying for extra classes.

But not only are the children gaining tools that will afford them a future in terms of work, the payment method is making, of these young minds, the environmental ambassadors for the future. It helps them to understand the use, management and recycling of waste products.

Tourist sites in countries like Cambodia are often clogged with garbage. Plastic bags and bottles are tossed out without a second thought, many of which end up in garbage-choked cities or smothering once idyllic beaches. Cambodia accumulated 3.6 million tonnes of waste last year, according to the country’s environment minister. A mere 11% of this is recycled, while almost half of it is burned or thrown into rivers causing widespread pollution. The rest is trucked to ever-growing landfills and dump sites, where the piles of garbage emitting methane gas can lead to unexpected and dangerous fires as well as add to climate change.