The group is at Yale

We've received word from the leaders that the group has arrived in New Haven, CT. All of the Global Action World Issues groups have settled into the dorms at Yale University and students are preparing to put the final touches on their presentations.

Stoung and Siem Reap

Hello all,

After nearly a week in Stoung, a village about 50 km north of Kampong Cham, we have arrived in Siem Reap. The hometown of Angkor Wat has a much different feel to it than anywhere we have been thus far—in the course of a day we have gone from being the only foreigners in town to being among the million+ tourists who pass through Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat each year.

We had a very productive and insightful week in Stoung. As we mentioned before, we had the chance to be the first ambassadors of Western culture ever to have visited the town. Our arrival was met with apprehension by the students there, who didn’t know how to react to foreigners; however, they soon warmed to our presence and were as excited to spend time with us, learning about our culture, as we were excited to learn about their lifestyles. The teaching aspect of our project surpassed our expectations, with the local students (through the help of our translators) asking many questions about our culture, education system, and how Cambodia compares to the US.

For the hands-on projects, we arranged for the re-tiling of one nursery school classroom and re-surfaced another classroom floor with a new layer of cement, smoothing the surface and filling in all the holes that had previously existed. After mixing all the cement for the floors manually, we now have a much greater appreciation for the trucks that do all the hard work for us in the US! Additionally, we re-painted the wooden shutters and doors of all three school buildings, as well as the (previously rust-covered) front gate to the schoolyard. The girls all worked very hard and we are so proud of the work they have done and their consistently positive attitudes and insightful thoughts on Cambodia.

Tomorrow we are off to visit Beng Melea, a temple about 90 minutes outside of Siem Reap which has yet to see any restoration work—this will be a fantastic pre-cursor to Angkor Wat and the other most popular temples in the Angkor Archeological Park, as we will get to see what they looked like when they were first “re-discovered” by Henri Mahout in the mid-19^th century.

We continue to enjoy ourselves and our time in Cambodia immensely—we are developing the details of our Yale presentation this week and look forward to sharing it with you next weekend!

Painted doors and tiled floors,

Jenn & Nate

Lauren shows off one of the posters she made as a
visual aid to her classes on American culture

Local students show their excitement for our visit!

Helping hands hard at work repainting the exterior doors of the school

The finished product!

Kasya, Nate, Katie, and Izzy share lunch together in a local home

Sarah hard at work prepping the classroom floor for a smooth new layer of cement

Natalie and Katie use their muscles to mix cement by hand as they re-surface the floor

Nursery school students in their newly tiled classroom

Sophia, Izzy, Deanna, Sarah, Kasya, Natalie, and Lauren
ready to begin work on the front gate to the schoolyard

Sophia and Kate peek out from behind the freshly-painted gate

Telephone greetings from Stoung!

This week we are in the small town of Stoung, north of Kampong Thom. There is no Internet access here, so we are asking our colleagues in Putney to type this phone message.

We are quite likely the first real-life ambassadors from the United States to many people in Stoung, as many school children here have never seen Westerners in person. With the help of the school director, who oversees the 780 kids, we have decided on a complex teaching system of rotating our students into the 10 classrooms to provide lessons about hygiene (kids don’t have toothbrushes at home), the environment (trash is often thrown on the ground here), and American culture and professions. The director enthusiastically explained this idea and his aim is for us to present the ideas to the children so they start to think about possibilities for their own country.

In addition to these teaching projects, we are tiling one of the classroom floors, painting the school’s wooden windows and doors, and we’ll hopefully give out toothbrushes (which we will buy for 10 cents each) and tubes of toothpaste (13 cents) to each student. We will also model how to wash hands and brush teeth. Our students have finished their posters and are excited to teach tomorrow. We’ll have internet access when we reach Siem Reap on Friday evening.

Minty toothpaste and no litter waste,

Nate and Jenn

The Week in Review: Phnom Penh

Hello all,

We have had such an action-packed week in Phnom Penh that we didn’t have a chance to update the blog to let you know what we’ve been up to until now. We started off the week by working with the organization Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), which was started by our friend Arn Chorn-Pond (with whom we met on our first night in country). The non-governmental organization (NGO) provides Khmer music, dance, theater, and other traditional performing arts.

We also visited and toured the facilities of Tourunesourire D’ensant, which helps children who are forced to pick trash from the dump by paying for their schooling and providing additional skills training education in one of 25 different professional vocations; Fair Fashion Cambodia, a clothing and accessories design company that provides rescued sex workers with a fair wage and skills training in the garment industry; and Digital Divide Data, a social enterprise organization which combines the business model of an IT data entry corporation with the kind of social goals often found in non-profit organizations such as ongoing skills training, medical benefits not usually offered in Cambodia, and recruitment of staff from underprivileged backgrounds.

We also spent several afternoons at Aziza’s Schoolhouse (a small 2 classroom school that offers supplemental schooling to some of the poorer students in the capital). Whereas some families cannot afford the books, uniforms, and school fees to send all their kids to school, Aziza’s Schoolhouse seeks to alleviate the burden on these families by providing additional classes in English, health education. and vocation-specific skills. We danced aerobics with Aziza’s students alongside the nightly crowds at the Olympic Stadium, and even brought three of them along with us as translators during our time spent at the orphanage in Kampong Cham and the village school in Stuong! We will all have the opportunity to support Aziza when we meet at Yale as our girls will be selling t-shirts that they designed in collaboration with the Aziza students as a fund-raiser! Bring your checkbooks!

NGOs and fair-trade clothes,

Jenn and Nate

The Killing Fields

Yesterday we visited the Killing Fields, a grim reminder of Cambodia's tragic modern history which still lingers in many people's memories. While there we had the girls jot down some of their thoughts and emotions, which we collected and later shared at our evening meeting. We thought we'd share their responses with you:

• “I want to remember the Killing Fields not only because of the souls that were lost, but for remembering this in history. If we forget why the Killing Fields are so quiet and still, we might make the same mistake.”

• “I thought that the heavy grey sky and constant winds appropriately set the scene for the historic sight. The piles upon piles of skulls, each with holes where the eyes should have been, seemed to all be staring at me when I entered the memorial building. Afterwards, while walking through the grounds, I felt the intensity of the number of dead.”

• "What shocks me is that the events that took place here were so terrible and senseless, yet so much order and planning went into them. The Killing Fields are a sickening reminder of the evil that one group of humans can inflict upon thousands of others with full awareness but no conscience.”

• “It is hard to believe that we are in the place where so many people were brutally murdered. I can’t even begin to imagine how the people who were brought here felt. It is hard for me to imagine the individuals whose skulls are stacked here. I wish I could learn more about each person who suffered through this terrible mass murder.”

• “Today I saw the teeth still attached to a skull, and a button from a man’s shirt sitting on top of children's bones. Being at the Killing Fields makes the horror stories from the Pol Pot regime seem incredibly real to me. It’s upsetting and terrifying but I’m glad we came here because I think that it’s very important to be aware of the horrifying realities, past and present, that are all over the world.”

• “I can’t quite grasp that we’re here, at the Killing Fields, where thousands were murdered for the most horrible reasons. It makes me want to do something, to turn back time maybe, or to meet the families of those who were killed and do my best to understand their grief.”

• “I wasn’t sure what to expect but being here has made me more interested in the stories of the genocide. Seeing all the skulls was the most shocking because it shows you exactly what people went through. I’m glad I got to be here and see the Killing Fields and I think people should come if they can.”

• “Coming to the Killing Fields brings an even stronger feeling that Cambodia deserves so much better. How something so horrible and ugly could happen to a group of people who are so nice and welcoming in such a beautiful country is a mystery. I can’t possibly grasp how an event like this could happen without intervention for so long, or how someone could kill for absolutely no reason. Being here makes me even angrier that the genocide in Cambodia is not widely taught in the US.”

Yale Information

Hello family and friends,

Yale is less than three weeks away! This will be the final communication from Putney before the end of the program, and we hope that it will provide you with plenty of information as you prepare for your time at Yale University.

Presentations and Picnic

The final presentations will be held on Saturday, August 1st at Sudler Recital Hall at William Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St, New Haven. Global Action students will attend all of the presentations. Please plan to arrive a few minutes early so that we can keep to our tight schedule; your child will meet you there. The presentations are each approximately one hour long and will take place the following times:

9:30 AM: Welcome
10 AM: India
11:30 AM: El Salvador
2:30 PM: China
4 PM: Cambodia

Presentations will be followed by a picnic for families and the entire Global Action community at Timothy Dwight College. We hope you will join us!

How to RSVP

If you plan to attend the presentations and picnic at Yale, please RSVP by email to putney.gaia2009@gmail.com by Friday, July 17. Please note your name, your son/daughter’s group name, and how many there will be in your party (do not include your son/daughter in that number).

Communication with Putney

All communication with Putney from July 30 to August 1 should be directed to our Yale office:

Office Line: (203) 436-1577
Cell Phone: (561) 504-6325
Email: putney.gaia2009@gmail.com


Travel to/from Yale

Each Global Action group has chartered private buses from the airport to Yale University on July 30. While at Yale, students and leaders will be housed at Timothy Dwight College, 345 Temple St. (at Grove St.), Yale University, New Haven, CT.

We hope that families can arrive to Yale in the morning of August 1 and stay in New Haven that night. There will be group presentations and a final picnic on August 1, though the programs do not end until the morning of August 2. Students should be picked up from Timothy Dwight College on August 2 between 9 a.m. and 12 noon. (Putney will provide transportation to the local airport and train station for students that are returning home on their own.)

In the information we have sent to your digital locker, you will find directions to Timothy Dwight College, a list of area hotels, and a customized map including parking information that you should bring to Yale with you. Yale has also provided us with a user-friendly online map at http://business.yale.edu/map.

We look forward to meeting you on August 1st!

The Playground Project: 72 hours in photos

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we are counting this entry showcasing our work at the orphanage as a 11,000-word essay. We hope you enjoy it!!