PROJECTS

Phnong Education Initiative (PEI)
Cambodia’s Mondulkiri Province, located 160km northeast of Kampong Cham, is home to the Phnong (Bunong) people, an indigenous minority and hill tribe who survive mainly on subsistence slash-and-burn agriculture in Mondulkiri’s mountainous forests. Mondulkiri is the largest, yet among the most inaccessible and isolated provinces of Cambodia. With only one secondary school facility in each district, education has yet to become a commonality. Further exacerbating the great distances children from remote communities must travel to attend school is the dearth of Phnong-speaking teachers. With few educated locals, most teachers in the province are of Khmer ethnicity who come from other provinces for work. Low enrollment rates (16 percent for secondary school compared to a national average of 35 percent) and high dropout rates attest to the difficulties raised by this language barrier. Despite modest improvements in access to education, literacy rates for highland minority tribes remain a staggering 5.3 percent in comparison to the Khmer majority (48.8 percent). Ethnic minority females fare even worse, with a 2000 study placing the highland tribe female literacy rate at less than one percent.

The Phnong Education Initiative (PEI) will provide scholarships to ethnic minority children who are largely excluded from the education system due to their extreme poverty, remoteness to schools and inability to speak Khmer. Not only will these scholarships ensure the children have what they need to go to school by way of uniforms, bikes, supplies, food and shelter, but it will provide tutoring support so they can excel despite the language barrier. In addition, the program will support teacher training of Phnong girls who finish grade 9 so they can return to their communities and help other Phnong children through school, allowing the program to achieve outcomes that will reverberate throughout communities and even generations.

Partner: Kampuchean Action for Primary Education (KAPE)

Supported by: Buddhist Global Relief, IPA Foundation