On October 7th, His Excellency Im Sethy, Minister of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) of Cambodia presided over the closing ceremony of two projects implemented by VVOB Cambodia since 2004 in the three target provinces of Siem Reap, Odtar Meanchey and Kampong Cham. In his speech the Minister spoke highly of the project results and emphasized that the capacity that was built together with VVOB at the teacher training centres is a valuable asset for Cambodia’s education sector.
The Learner-Centred Methodology project started in 2004 and guided a process of capacity development at the Provincial Teacher Training Centres (PTTC) for primary school teachers. This process also involved the development and publication of manuals and other instructional resources for teacher trainers under the supervision of the Ministry. Whereas the initial scope covered 3 provinces of Cambodia, all 18 PTTCs of Cambodia were involved in the final mainstreaming stage. The Minister advised to deploy the strengthened pre-service teacher trainer capacity also for in-service purposes - a strategy that VVOB recently piloted in cooperation with UNICEF (see article “VVOB and UNICEF join to organise Child Friendly Schools training in Cambodia”).
The Open Resource Centre project started in 2006 at the PTTC of Siem Reap and provided teacher trainers as well as student teachers the skills to develop multimedia teaching resources. The centre now also offers a wide range of ready-made digital resources in Khmer language to support interactive and student centred classroom activities. Moreover, an on-line platform was set up to provide the opportunity to teacher trainers throughout Cambodia to exchange teaching resources. The centre recently moved to a more spacious building which was recently constructed by a BTC project. VVOB installed the network and equipment, but more importantly provided educational resources to the centre. A good example of how two development partners can complement and reinforce each other’s achievements. After the closing ceremony the Minister visited the Open Resource Centre and expressed his appreciation of the multimedia materials as well as the educational web portal. He commended the staff of the central MoEYS departments to adopt these resources on a nationwide scale, as foreseen in the new ICT master plan of MoEYS.
The recognition of the projects’ achievements by the highest level of the Ministry is the result of the hard work of all people involved over the past 5 years, including numerous government staff, directors, teacher trainers and teachers as well as the VVOB project staff. In particular the project coordinators Nadia Reynders and Veerle Cnudde, former colleagues Nelly Tondeur, Mikis Putseys and Walter Laureys, as well as the Cambodian VVOB staff Chanroat, Mouly, Ngoun, Socheat, Veasna, Channa and Sokun contributed greatly to the successes of these projects. Mr. Leav Ora, director of the PTTC Siem Reap and Jan Geusens, programme manager of VVOB Cambodia can be proud of their teams and the successful cooperation.
