Youth Delegation Trip to Cambodia

Master and Class Sponsorship Report

MASTER: Ieng Sithul
CLASS: Nearly 60 students in the Tonle Bassac community in Phnom Penh learn wedding music and dances, including singing, dancing, and how to play the instrument ensembles

Students: CLA provides stipends to 30 students in the Tonle Bassac Community to learn with Master Ieng Sithul. This allows them to attend class instead of spending their time trying to earn money, and it also enables them to attend school, helping to pay for their school fees, uniforms, books, and to help out with the family expenses. Ieng Sithul’s students range in age from about 9-18.

This class is unique in that the remaining 30 students were beyond the scope of CLA’s initial budget, and were added to the class at the Master’s own initiative. Master Ieng Sithul himself personally subsidizes these students, and he encourages all of the students to share their stipends amongst one another, to encourage one another to share in their learning. One student remarked, “We are happy to share the money because we want to encourage others to learn our culture too.”

The students also perform regularly, and the Master shares the income generated from these performances with all of these students, so that they can see how their skills are generating income.

Recently, CLA opened a new facility in Phnom Penh with a much bigger space to accommodate the larger dance and theater classes. While many of the students still live in the Tonle Bassac for now, the new facility is within walking distance, so that they now have a clean, safe, and much more spacious place to practice and learn.

Master profile:
Ieng Sithul is one of Cambodia’s most popular wedding singers, famous for his beautiful voice. He appears on television, in DVDs, and performs at the weddings of the country’s highest officials. Ieng Sithul is probably our most well-known and most prosperous Master, and an amazing and dedicated teacher to a huge class of nearly 60 students.

Some of the things that Ieng Sithul has done:

*He helped to develop a library for the class to use to assist in learning about Khmer culture and history. The library is filled with children’s books in both Khmer and English, and we have a space for where this can be started a new in the new CLA House facility. We are hoping that we will also be able to raise funds for computers and a staff person so that we can one day host English classes, computer training, and arts-related reading programs for the children learning music classes.

*He has actively worked to get performances for the students and shares with them income from these performances.

*He is one of our most dynamic and curious teachers, taking the initiative to develop the students into effective peer educators by encouraging exchanges between this class and visits to classes in the countryside, and by encouraging the students to help and educate one another.

YOUR SUPPORT

The $6,000 that you have raised will go to support Ieng Sithul, his assistant masters, his students, instruments, costumes, make-up, and props, stipends for all of the students so that they can learn and stay in regular school, classroom space, and field trips, recital, and exchange opportunities.

You are not only supporting these students to learn more about their heritage and to connect to the past, but also helping to lay the groundwork for long-term, sustainable change for the future—a future that we envision to be one of peace and prosperity and artistic rejuvenation. You are helping them to improve their relationships with other children, to become student leaders, to relate better to the ways of their elders. You are helping to provide them not just with the technical skills, but with the networks and the relationships and the love and joy that will help to support these students throughout their lives. Thank you again for all your support.

Beni Chhun
Development Officer
Cambodian Living Arts
A project of World Education
Tel: (617) 482-9485 x 536