On behalf of the NSS and 10ME team, I would like to report the welcome meeting with new students and their families.
On 12 December, the NSS, 10ME conducted the welcome meeting and integrated new students. The purpose of the meeting was to integrate all new students and to formally announce to them that they are now becoming a part of our CRST family. New students, their families, and some senior leadership members were invited to join the meeting.
We invited everyone to join the meeting in the morning beginning from 8:00 AM – 11:00 AM. All of the new students and their families were joining us except Sreypich as her home is very far from Siem Reap – she lives in Battambang. Sreypich will come to Siem Reap after the national exam.
The event was well-organized. Most of the new students and their parents were so curious to visit our campus. Some of them arrived at the campus about 1 hour in advance of the meeting. While waiting for more students, we were chitchatting with our new students and their relatives. Until 8:00 am, Ang began to welcome all new students and their families. All of them were informed of the meeting’s purpose. We all were so pleased to formally welcome our new family members.
After a warm greeting, Srey Leab was invited to present the NGO background to all new students and their families – she was presenting about how CRST was created – your family visiting Cambodia in 2009 and the publishing of the NGO in 2011. After Srey Leab’s presentation, immediately, Sokal was then invited to explain CRST’s vision “Breaking the Poverty Cycle Through Education ''. Both presentations were so impressive and well-explained.
Next, Sokhim as the Education Department manager introduced how all new students will be supported with education and which schools they will be studying in. Particularly, presenting for new high school students, they will be very active in the studies that will require them to study from 7:00 am – 11:50 am and 2:00 pm – 4:50 pm. In addition to this, the new high school students will be provided with 3 meals every day except Sundays and holidays. Then the 7 future IEAP students were also informed about their future studies in PUCSR.
The last presenter, Heng, introduced all CRST’s projects and some community departments – Project Y, Project G, Project R, Project B&V, recently established Project W, and Project L. Importantly, Volunteer and Family Support departments were also detailed. Through volunteering, high school or grade 12 graduated students are assigned to volunteer with some NGO partners or somewhere else where students will be able to learn from volunteering opportunities as well as contribute to the community. Through Family Support, students will also get the opportunity to help vulnerable people who are truly needing support, and students can learn to help other people while they are supported by our NGO. All new students and their families were exposed to understand that we can help our societies as much as we could, we don’t need to wait until we get rich. Besides learning to help others, we are also learning to be grateful to who else supports us.
After all the presentations, everyone was so pleased, clapped their hands, and appreciated all the presenters. We thanked all presenters, Srey Leab, Sokal, Sokhim, and Heng.
We had a 15-minute break for having snacks and chit-chatting with each other. Lean and the TENME team prepared Khmer traditional cakes and fruits for everyone. While having snacks everyone, new students, their families, and our students had conversations with each other – everyone made the meeting enjoyable.
After a break, we invited all new students to introduce themselves and their commitments. Each of them greatly introduced themselves and had a really good commitment to both education and NGO requirements. They will be doing their best to make changes for themselves, contribute to CRST, and make their families proud of them. We thanked them for expressing their feelings and commitment to life changes.
Besides all new students’ introductions, we also invited their parents to share with us their feelings when seeing their sons and daughters strive to help themselves and others. Two students’ mothers were expressing their feelings – they emotionally thanked us for providing the life-changing opportunities to their son and daughter. In addition to their gratitude, they also requested us to mentor and correct the new students.
After all, Ang made a closing remark and thanked all new students and their families for trusting CRST, and decided to be a part of us to break the poverty cycle through education in Cambodia. That’s the end of the welcome event.
After the event, we invited all of the new high school students and their families to visit FBIS and grade 12 students to visit PUC. For the grade 12 students, after the ending of welcoming and visiting PUC, they went home. For the high school students, they had lunch with us and then we took them to their rent rooms.
In the afternoon at around 2:00 pm, we asked the new high school students to go to the market with us to buy some essential needs for the allocation such as gas stove, dish, bin, knives, and so on. Additionally, since these students had just come to Siem Reap and started classes at FBIS after a welcome day, we assisted them to have meals at one restaurant where the food’s prices are acceptable. After a week, we let them cook or buy food by themselves. We just gave them the meal allowance. Hopefully, next month, all high school students will have a proper place to have meals.
Lastly, we would like to thank all of the NSS, TENME, presenters, and all participants who assisted us in welcoming new students and making them feel close to us..
Respectfully yours,
NSS &TENME,
Ang BUN
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