Chantrea is a girl of 21 years old from a single-parent family. She is thin and weak. She is a student of year two in major of Teaching English to Students of Other Languages (TESOL) at the Institute of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Veterans, Kingdom of Cambodia. In 2017, she finished her high school and got a Baccalaureate in Ratanak Kiri province, which is considered one among the poor provinces, 548 kilometers from Phnom Penh, the northern part in Cambodia. In the same year, she was selected in the government scholarship committee list for the needy people and moved to advance her studies in Phnom Penh.
For the first year at the Institute, she rented a room and strived herself hard to live alone in Phnom Penh since she did not have any relatives or friends to share a room or concerns. The first semester of her year one, she did well at her school: she came to school and completed her homework on time, she was remarkably active to share ideas, and answered to any questions asked by her teachers.
However, things had changed when she came to semester II in year one. She started to come late often; she sometimes failed to complete her homework and was late for class. Moreover, she became reserved in class. Her situation became more serious when she came to her second year. When asked to come to meet personally in the Discipline Office, she let us know some reasons for her changes.
She had a very hard time to get money for her rent since she had only her mother to support. Her mother lived alone in Ratanak Kiri province and she made her wage by labor. Chantrea got monthly money from her mother to spend on her studies, food and room. She decided to stop getting monthly money from her mother and she began her part time job as coffee clerk in a café shop. She started her work from 1:00pm to 9:00pm. She needed to ride a bike to work right after she finished her studies at 11 or 12 pm and came back home around 9:30pm. She ended up feeling that to survive in the city was more important than going to school.
Questions:
The Opinion of the Writer
Every year the Cambodian government offers scholarship to the needy, poor family students across the country. The scholarship covers only school fee, but not including accommodation and other necessary livings. Thus, most students start to have poor participation in school. The government should provide students who are from far-flung areas with student loans and other assistances such as dormitory, travelling means. By doing this, the poor and needy scholarship students will maintain their participation at their school and get a better result.
