Japan Relief for Cambodia &
American Assistance for Cambodia
50B Street 240 Phnom Penh, Cambodia Tel: 855-234-27813 Fax: 855-234-26573
Please reply to: 4-1-7-605 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo (81-3-3486-4337)
e-mail: bernie@medit.mit.edu -- site: www.cambodiaschools.com
BERNARD KRISHER Chairman
April 4, 2000
PRESS RELEASE
For immediate releaseFor further Information contact
Bernard Krisher in Tokyo at 81-3-3486-4337; fax: 81-3-3486-6789
Phnom Penh Hotel Intercontinental (April 6-12) 855-234-24888 (Room 1421)
(e-mail: bernie@media.mit.edu)The media is invited to attend the opening event at Kompong Cham, Cambodia on Friday April 7. Transportation will be provided from Phnom Penh. Please notify Doug Schlemmer at 012-838-965 or Nuon So Thero 012-911-859 or 023 427-823 if you plan to cover this ceremony.
JAPANESE SCHOOL, BUILT A CENTURY AGO FROM '100 SACKS OF RICE,'
DONATES A RURAL SCHOOL TO CAMBODIA
The alumni of a Niigata, Japan high school built 130 years ago from the proceeds of the sale of 100 sacks of rice and which went on to educate many talented people who were to play a leading role in the new Japan, are commemorating their anniversary by funding the construction of a rural school in Cambodia this week.Some 20 alumni from the Kome Hyappyo (100 Sacks of Rice) High School in Nagaoka City, Niigata are traveling to attend the opening ceremony of the solar-roofed, computer-equipped rural school in Kompong Cham on Friday, April 7. It is the fourth completed school of an expected 200 village schools aimed at providing knowledge and opportunities to Cambodia's rural children.
Under this program donors contribute $14,000 for a school, plus the cost of solar paneling which provides sufficient energy to operate a computer donated by Apple Japan and others. Some schools will gradually have Internet access.
The children will be taught to use computers with the view of providing them skills that can assist their villages in benefiting from services and knowledge available in more populated areas. Schools which can be linked to the Internet will benefit from telemedicine, provide outlets for village products through e-commerce and make it possible for village children to connect by e-mail to other children around the world.
One of the earlier schools, the Wakako Hironaka School in Preah Vihear, has been established as a pilot school aimed at experimenting with this potential.
Funds for erecting the schools are matched by a World Bank credit through the Social Fund of Cambodia which manages the construction. An amount is also set aside to pay the rural teachers a supplementary fee to motivate them to move and teach in the villages.
Donations for more than 50 schools have already been received or pledged from persons in the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. Many are naming the schools after deceased parents, grandchildren or their organizations. Another donor asked his family not to hold a funeral after his death in order to donate the amount that had been saved up, for two schools. An American couple is naming three schools after grandchildren. Other donors include the editor of TIME Asia, the chairman of the well-known jewelry firm, Harry Winston, and a retired Fuji Film plant manager. The Japan Cambodia Volunteer Assn. in Tokyo is sponsoring a school chosen by Cambodian foreign students studying in Japan. Recent donors also include the director of the MIT Media Laboratory; a Tokyo Rotary Club; The Wang Foundation; The Nippon Foundation; Kikkoman; The AEON Group and Toshu Fukami who is the chairman of World Mate, a Japanese welfare organization.
Many donors are average people who believe education to children in villages will assure a more stable and peaceful environment in the future Cambodia, whose population underwent so much trauma. An estimated two million Cambodians died under the cruel Khmer Rouge regime when schools stopped functioning. A priority of this project is to establish schools in poor, rural areas whose children have been deprived from any educational facilities or been forced to learn outdoors for lack of funds to construct schoolhouses. The campaign brochure seeking donations bears the catchphrase: "Put a Roof on Their Head."
The project has received the warm support of both King Norodom Sihanouk and Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Transparency is provided to donors who can see their schools on the site: www.cambodiaschools.com
The finances of construction are audited for the World Bank by Price Waterhouse, an American accounting firm. Computers for the schools have been donated by Apple-Japan, the MIT Media Laboratory and individual donors.
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The Kome Hyappyo School is renowned in Japan and was the subject of a well-known play by novelist Yuzo Yamamoto (1887-1974) and translated into English by Donald Keene, professor emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University.
This is an excerpt from a book depicting the school's history:
Nagaoka was a small feudal domain in northern Japan near its sea coast. In May 1870 Nagaoka lost a hard-fought civil war against the new imperial government: The entire city was reduced to a burnt wasteland the populace was eking out a miserable subsistence in conditions of desperate poverty. At this point the rulers of the Mineyama domain, based about 30 kilometers north of Nagaoka and linked to it by family ties, sent a gift of 100 sacks of rice as a gesture of sympathy. When the news spread among the samurai warriors they were delighted at the prospect of having something to eat. But Kobayashi Torasaburo (1828-1877), a grand councilor of Nagaoka, chose not to distribute the rice but sell it to establish a school where not only Chinese and Japanese classics were taught but also Western studies - medicine, martial arts and science. When the samurai barged into his house to angrily demand the rice, he reasoned with and won them over, resulting in the creation of the school.
Kobayashi's immortal words which inspired the hungry samurai were: "Whether a country rises or falls, whether a town flourishes or decays, the answer lies in every case with the people. If we go on merely living from one day to the next, Nagaoka will never be rebuilt. It's because everyone is complaining of not having enough to eat that I thought of building a school."
"The Kome Hyappyo School alumni wish this message not to be confined to a particular time or place but see its relevance in the rural school we are funding in Cambodia," said Katsuo Nakamura, spokesman for the delegation and president of the Central Group, a Tokyo-based hotel and real estate firm.
The Japanese delegation will stay at the Hotel Intercontinental in Phnom Penh on April 6 and 7.
The exact location of the rural school is in Taing Boeung village, Pgav commune, Batheay district and Kampong Cham province. It is school #15 on the Cambodia Rural School website.
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