Children's Action For Development

Child Friendly Schools

In 2012, CAD began a partnership with an Australian NGO, Classroom of Hope, and Navitas Australia to implement Child Friendly Schools (CFS) in Ek Phnom District. A three year project began in 2013 to introduce the Schools for Excellence model across seven primary schools (Grades 1 to 6) and supported 1,762 children. In 2016, a second program was rolled out to meet the needs of 1,785 children in five more schools. For details about the SfE program, see below. One of the most tangible measures was the reduction in student drop out rates:

Our donors then turned their attention to building new government schools, supporting scholarship students and providing bicycles. Working closely with local authorities, CAD has built:
4 new classrooms at Ek Phnom
4 new classrooms at Andoung Trach
4 new classrooms at Toul Lveang
2 new classrooms at Preak Drob

Andoung Trach – the old school was made of wood and leaked so much in the in the rainy season that they could not hold classes.

Now they have an amazing new school!

Activities in the Child Friendly Schools program include:

• Creating maps of the school catchment areas; showing the location of homes of children who should be attending primary school.
• Supporting over 1260 scholarship students (210/year)with materials, remedial and life skills classes. This also includes visits at school and home.
• Recruiting and training Community Teachers to work in schools where there are teacher shortages.
• Establishing Child-To-Child networks; where older children are encouraged to mentor younger students.
• Form the student council and make them active
• Carrying out infrastructure improvements; including providing clean water and sanitation, classroom enhancement, bio-gardens and playgrounds.
• Provided school grant to schools
• Built capacity training to SDs, SMSs, SSCs, CCs, and teachers ( School base on Management-(SBM), CfS learning & teaching Methods, Roles & responsibility, SIP building, fund raising)
• Strengthening DTMT on effectiveness of monitoring and M&E planning
• Recruiting and training community members to join School Support committees and mentoring SSCs to work with School Directors to improve conditions.
• Working with District Office of Education staff to conduct monitoring visits to schools.
• Working with Provincial Office of Education staff to facilitate workshop and or training.

• Construct 4 new classrooms at Ek Phnom school.
• Repaired 2 room-toilets at Ek Phnom school (core fund received from One Family Australia)

In 2019, Navitas provided another round of funding for the following activities:

• Construct 4 new classrooms at Andoung Trach school in Year 1 (completed and opened in December 2019).
• Construct 4 new classrooms at Toul Lveang school in 2020.
• Construct 2 new classrooms at Preak Drob school in 2021.
• Provide 90 scholarships to students each year.
• Provide a total of 60 bicycles to poor children who live a long way from school.

For more examples of Child Friendly School results, see our Programs and Success Stories or Classroom of Hope