Fun and Service in Cambodia

To accomplish this, RCTC together with the NGO, participated in a beautification project by planting flowers and trees around a village primary school. Youth Services of Cambodia helps villages by picking up trash, installing water purifiers, supplying garbage bins, marching down the streets of Phnom Penh and villages encouraging citizens not to litter, and providing charity projects for children in Phnom Penh's garbage dumps.

Individual RCTC student projects included one young woman who raised money for modern toilets and a well (many girls quit school, embarrassed from lacking privacy when they begin menstruating); another student worked to connect Cambodian neak onkha chen zhi school children with an American class that made a book of what life in America is about, and, in turn having Cambodian kids create a book representing life in Cambodia to bring back to American school children; another student project investigated the sex trade in Cambodia.

RCTC found that international education begins in the classroom with ideas and grant proposals, but it must transfer outside of the classroom to help connect and improve societies for the better in a diplomatic, sustainable way through intimate intercultural communication and a good deal of sweat. This involves working with those whom one intends to serve, listening and learning about their needs, wants, and dreams, then lending one's expertise. The relationship must be long term for any project to be sustainable and fruitful. Carefully nurtured service learning is one avenue of international education which furthers this goal. RCTC will certainly continue to build its program.