Picture an American child learning to read. In an ideal education world (according to what I learned at Wartburg College ), she would need to spend hours reading dozens of  books at varying difficulty levels, of all genre types, and about many different topics to become a proficient reader. Book stores and almost all schools in America are filled with books to meet these requirements. Note the emphasis on almost all schools—I am not naïve enough to not know that many schools in at-risk communities in the States lack funds for quality libraries. These books are well written, in her native language, and are culturally relevant.

Picture a Cambodian child learning to read. If she is attending public school, she is probably disadvantaged by the fact that her teachers may demand bribes in exchange for teaching her and they may not have received much quality teacher training. Then there’s the fact that many  books she has been exposed to have been originally written in English—poorly translated the Khmer and geared toward a culture that is foreign to her—OR they are Cambodian folk stories filled with plot lines about murder, lying, or ghosts...not great at promoting literacy or character development.

The students at CCAM (Cambodian Christian Arts Ministry—http://www.ccamvision.org/), where I am currently working, have written and illustrated many children’s books over the years. Due to a lack of man power, many of them are sitting in bins in storage waiting to be scanned into a computer and formatted into a document that can be printed and distributed.

Over the past few months, I have enjoyed learning how to use programs like Adobe Photoshop and In Design to start getting the stories ready to be sent to the printer.

One book is ready to go. It has been approved by the Ministry of Education (an amazing God thing considering its subtle mention of church and the Bible) to be distributed throughout Cambodia by Room to Read (http://www.roomtoread.org/page.aspx?pid=300), an international education organization that works in Cambodia to build reading rooms filled with native language books and educational games to supplement the education they are receiving in the public schools.

The current hold up preventing this book from being distributed is a lack of funds (I know, I know…funds is what it always comes down to!) BUT if you have connections to groups—PTA groups, literacy promotion groups, church Sunday School offerings, retired teacher groups, book clubs—that have some money looking to find a good use, I’d love to talk with you about how it could be used to empower literacy for Cambodian children.

You can email me or leave a comment below if you have questions or want to learn more!