Software Education's Aid Project in Cambodia
Software Education donates a percentage of all public course fees, both in New Zealand and Australia, to a development project in the Kampong Thom province of Cambodia. As most of you will know, Cambodia has suffered enormously over recent times …during the six years of Pol Pot's reign, for example, it is estimated that as many as 2 million people were killed out of a population of around 10 million (including two Australians and one New Zealander). All hospitals and schools were closed, currency eliminated and people were driven into the countryside. Pol Pot's legacy is a land still littered with land mines.
Software Education is the major sponsor for World Vision's "Area Development Project" in the Stong district of Kampong Thom province. Through this NGO, Software Education provides funding for a number of villages within the Stong District.
In December 2007, Martyn and Christine Jones travelled to Cambodia to view this work first hand. (Martyn is Managing Director of Software Education and Christine co-ordinates the work with World Vision). They came back totally inspired!
"To be honest, we weren't sure how this project was progressing and specifically how the money given each month was being applied" comments Christine. "This was an opportunity for us to directly assess the effectiveness of the sponsorship. What we saw was impressive."
Each of the stand-alone villages in the Stong district face huge challenges: lack of clean water (and flooding in the rainy season), lack of medical support exacerbated by poor sanitation and diet, subsistence living, child prostitution, physical and mental scaring from war and starvation. Education is very basic and superstition figures large when, for example, a child becomes sick.
World Vision's Area Development Project (ADP) for Stong has a dedicated team assigned to this program. It is a major undertaking, with a completion date of 2012 and an estimated total spend of around US$1,000,000.
"We are most impressed by World Vision's Stong ADP team" reports Martyn. "Their calibre and commitment is such that I would gladly employ any of them in Software Education."
"In fact, much of the planning for improving the lot of these villagers looks similar to an IT project. As explained to us, the established model of aid is to do something for the recipients – drop in a well, kill off the mosquitoes – whereas in this project, the idea is to spend time getting close to the villagers to discover what they think might work best. Does this remind you of a requirements gathering exercise?!"
Here's the project team's planning template (literally a sheet!), which gives you an idea of the discussion and thought that has gone into the Stong ADP. Specific tasks during this planning phase have included stakeholder analysis, detailed data collection on the target audience and specific small trial projects such as fishponds (prototyping?)
After a bumpy four-wheel drive from Kampong Thom, Martyn and Christine visited two of the villages within the project to meet the villagers, discuss their situation and to see first-hand the potential for improvement.
In this photo are Christine and Martyn Jones, together with Paul Martell (right), World Vision's Government Relations Manager in NZ, who accompanied Martyn and Christine on this trip. The discussions in each village were quite long, including translation by members of the World Vision team …challenging when you are not used to sitting cross-legged on a mat! But what was clear throughout was the potential to improve things …from lifting incomes to preventing young girls being sold into child prostitution (a major problem in Cambodia), to providing improved education and basic health care.
A specific project that had been set up to demonstrate the potential for change was cat fish farming. Believe it or not, the brown stuff in the photo above is water, in which cat fish happily live! Fingerling stock had been brought in and cat fish raised as both a source of food and income.
"It is simply amazing that despite many difficulties and the traumatic experiences endured by many of their parents, the children in these villages are so cheerful and bright" comments Christine. "It feels good to be able to offer assistance, in a country that still has far to go before the necessities of life, which we take for granted, are freely and consistently available".
For each person attending a Software Education public course, both in Australia and New Zealand, Software Education makes a donation to World Vision's Stong ADP project in Cambodia. Software Education is the major sponsor of this project. For further information on Software Education's involvement, contact Christine Jones – 
