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 

PRESS RELEASE 

For release on or after: November 1, 1999 

For further Information contact
Bernard Krisher in Tokyo at 81-3-3486-4337; fax: 81-3-3486-6789 
(e-mail: bernie@media.mit.edu) 

Or Doug Schlemmer or Nuon So Thero at 855-234-27823 

The media is invited to attend the opening event.-Transportation will be available from Phnom Penh, with limited seats on a helicopter. Please notify Doug Schlemmer (855-17-817-320) or Nuon So Thero (855-12-844-317) as soon as possible if you plan to cover this event 

FIRST THREE OF 200 SOLAR-PANELED, COMPUTER-EQUIPPED
CAMBODIAN RURAL SCHOOLS WILL OPEN NOVEMBER 4 IN 
THREE REMOTE PREAH VIHEAR VILLAGES 

The first three of an expected two hundred village schools, aimed at providing knowledge and opportunities to Cambodia's rural children, will be officially opened on November 4 in three remote, underserved, Preah Vihear villages. 

The donors of the first three schools: Japanese parliamentarian Mrs. Wakako Hironaka ( a former minister of the environment); Prof. Nicholas Negroponte, the director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Tokyo Shintoshin Rotary Club, will attend the opening ceremonies in the remote villages, eight hours by vehicle north of Phnom Penh. 

Each of the five room schools, named after the donor, is equipped with two solar panels, sufficient to provide enough energy to operate a computer for four- five hours a day. The village children will be taught to use computers with the view of providing them skills that can assist villages in benefiting from services and knowledge available in more populated areas. It is also aimed at establishing telemedicine services and make it possible for village children to connect by e- mail to other children around the world. 

At the opening day ceremonies a demonstration of Web access and a telemedicine link to Mass General Hospital via Shinawatra satellite communication links will be attempted. E-mail and voice contact will also be shown via Inmarsat, provided by KDD, and children will be talking to other children far away via Iridium. These villages have had no electricity nor telephone links. The schools are being built from individual donations of $13,000 (plus $1,700 for the solar panels) through the NCOs American Assistance for Cambodia and Japan Relief for Cambodia. 

These funds 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 of $30 a month to motivate them to move and teach in the villages. The local Cambodian NGO, Women for Prosperity, will recruit teachers and help to organize training workshops for them. 

Donations for over 20 schools have already been received from persons in the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. Many of them are naming the schools after deceased parents, grandchildren or their organizations. A Japanese alumni group from Niigata is naming its Cambodian school after their own high school which celebrates its 120th anniversary next year. 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. 

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." 

Donors of the first three schools will attend the opening ceremony in the Preah Vihear schools on the morning of November 4. They will be received by King Norodom Sihanouk at an audience in the Royal Palace on November 5. 

The project has received the warm support of both King Norodom Sihanouk and Prime Minister Hun Sen. 

Full transparency is provided to donors who can see their schools on the site (www.cambodiaschools.com). The finances of construction are also 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.