We're Dancing

We had an event with the children at CICFO.  They rolled out the tarp, we pulled out all of the tables and chairs, the children donned traditional attire and we began.
We sat right in front of the clearing as the children performed for us.  They shared with us the meanings and origins of their dances, helping us to understand the symbolism and including us in their culture for a few hours.  We received a glimpse of the old Cambodia, one that is, surprisingly, still a big part of their lives.  Honoring what Cambodia was is one of they ways that the children here have grown to deeply love their country.  These are not bitter, unhappy children.  They understand patriotism.
The girls danced and Absara dance.  Absara are angels.  They line the walls of the Temples in Angkor and are present in most Khmer art.  Absara are symbols of beauty, a remnant of Paeganism in Cambodia.  Pattica tells me that Absara were used in the King's palace so that the gods would look down on the palace and see that there were angels there who could take care of him.
The young boys danced the Monkey dance.  Monkeys are little troublemakers, so it's a perfect fit.  They have twisted cloth that forms a tail as part of their costumes. The dance includes a lot of rolling around and imitating the movements of a monkey.  The boys climb on eachother or fight for a banana, it's really cute to see them dance together.
Then some of the teenage girls and boys danced the Coconut dance.  They click coconut shells together, with themselves or with other dancers, as they weave in and out of formations.
There were other dances.  There was the dance that exhibited the life of rice farmers and one that was only danced by the teenage boys, each introduced by Pattica.


When the presentation was over, we ate together and when all of that was done, the dancing started again.  This time, it was music that we were more familiar with.  The rest of the evening was spent jamming to popular songs that were as familiar to us as they are to the kids.

Getting to Know You

Today we went through the alphabet and the letter sounds as a group and then took each kid to the side and tested their letter/sound recognition, the ability to read short words, and writing.  McKae administered the assessments and I took copious notes, finding patterns in problematic sounds and letters.  While the older kids brag that Khmer contains 32 vowels, the younger children identify each of our vowel sounds as ‘uh’.  There is no distinguishable difference between V and W here at CICFO, both sound like W and both say ‘we’.  The idea of resting your teeth on your bottom lip to create sound is foreign.   We'll start with that.  I know that learning correct pronunciations will help them be better understood both as we work with them and in the future. 

Natalie interviewed a number of the children to learn more about them and how they came to be part of CICFO.  She kept the rest of the kids entertained while we worked with them one at a time. 

There are more than 30 children who reside in CICFO.  We’re working on putting names to faces and coupling that with skill level.  It’s difficult, but we’re working. 

We’re starting at the beginning, teaching letter by letter.  We are working with letters we know they have a difficult time with, correcting pronunciation errors as best we can.  “V” instead of “we”, “guh” instead of “juh”.  We sing a lot.  They know kids’ songs:  BINGO, 5 Little Ducks, Down by the Bay, etc.  I’m here with the capacity to teach music as well as help with English and computer literacy, so we’re learning little songs that reinforce the letter lessons of the day.  With that and the odd requests to play Beiber and Celine Dion, we’re quite a musical bunch. 

Our oldest groups of kids come to learn at Botevy’s house which is where we are staying.  We have the computers set up on desks in the entry room.  The first thing we did was had the kids jump on the laptops and mess around with things they already knew.  After a little bit of that, we asked them to copy from a children’s book for a while, to see how they were typing.  It was clear that we needed to familiarize them with the QWERTY keyboard.  Our internet wasn’t working at the time, so we opened up a word document and started finger exercises, starting with the home keys.  

“A S D F, A S D F, F D S A, A D S F, F D, F D, F D, F D, D F, D F” 

And so it was, for half an hour.  We did similar exercises until we had familiarized the kids with each of the letters on the keyboard.  These are really sharp individuals; they’re catching on really quickly. 

We can’t wait to move onto things that are less painstaking for us, but we’re ready to take whatever time it requires to ingrain the basic skills into their muscles and minds. 

We are not the first volunteers to come teach these kids and with ICHope here, we hope to be the first of many to come.  With consistent teachers coming and working, these kids will be able to form a steady progression and be more successful in retaining the difficult information that we bring with us. What we’re doing is admirable, but it would mean very little without the people from ICHope that will come after us. 

Small means

It is a miracle that the three of us made it here at all, but we didn’t come through without a few battle scars.  The most devastating of these is the absence of our curriculum.  We had planned on a curriculum being donated by WIZARD, that may still come.  Due to the abysmal postage situation here in Cambodia, we may not receive any curriculum until mid-October.  We look forward to the day the curriculum comes to us.  Due to internet restrictions in Cambodia, we are unable to access the curriculum that we brought with us as a ‘Plan B’. With the inability to fulfill Plans A and B, we are left with the only resources we brought with us: faith, ingenuity, 4 laptops, and 35lbs of children’s reading material and early learning card games that were donated by my mother. 
For now, that is enough.  
Thursday was spent preparing the computers, organizing what materials we have, finding online typing tools, and attempting to download MAVIS Beacon Teaches Typing which, despite grand effort, was unsuccessful.  We spent a few hours deciding how to best assess the existing English skill in each of these kids which would help guide us in our future lesson planning.  This is a learning experience for both of us, so we make mistakes, but we’re improving with time and interaction with the kids.  

With love, The ICHope Interns

Welcome to CICFO

The Cambodian and International Children Friend Organization (CICFO) is run by two survivors of the Pol Pot regime in the 1980’s.  Botevy and Vanneth started this orphanage in 2006.  

  Botevy and Vanneth are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as are most of the orphanage staff.  The children go to church with these ladies every Sunday and most are heavily involved with The Church.  To learn more about the orphanage itself click here.

Welcome to Cambodia! Today we were officially introduced to the children of CICFO.  

The children formed lines and came up to us in turn.  “Hello, my name is ­­­____, I am ____ years old.  Nice to meet you.”   After every child introduced themselves to us, they sang a few songs from the LDS Primary Children’s Songbook.  These children have the sweetest smiles coupled with some of the saddest stories I’ve ever encountered.  These children do not have very much, but here at CICFO they have love.  You can tell by the way they interact, that they love each other and see one another as brother and sister.  CICFO is a very special family.   

Natalie became better acquainted with the orphanage staff while McKae and I played games with the kids.   

After a few hours of running around with them, it was time for us to leave, exhilarated by the thought of returning to them every day.  There was a small stampede as the children raced to say goodbye with hugs.

Meet ICHope

ICHope is a non-profit organization set up by Natalie Freebairn through the SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) program at Brigham Young University- Hawaii.  

ICHope was created to serve the needs of underprivileged children through Education.  It is our goal to prepare these kids to, one day, go to a university.  Our purpose is to help these children gain the English and computer skills that will aid them on their journey to a university, college, trade school, etc.  We feel this is important because English is the language of Academia.   We have found, through our own collegiate experiences, that Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are crucial in our classes.  We help children become proficient with these programs as well as basic internet usage.

ICHope serves children within their own country.  Our plea to the children is twofold:  1) Once success has smiled upon them, we ask that they return to their homeland to better themselves and their economy.  2) We implore them to give back what was given to them by donating to organizations that deal with underprivileged children or share their English and computer skills with underprivileged children.  

The ICHope teachers are student interns from BYU- Hawaii.

The business end of this organization is also run by students at BYU- Hawaii.  

ICHope uses materials that were generously donated by Microsoft.