austraLasia #3281
First
Graduation Ceremonies, Don Bosco Kep, Don Bosco
Battambang
KEP,
Cambodia:
8
September 2013 -- On Friday, September 06, 2013 the
governor of
Kep Province, Cambodia, Mr. Ken Satha, presided over the first
graduation day of the new Don Bosco Technical School in this
Cambodian
region, 164 kilometres south of Phnom Penh. It is situated on
the Gulf
of Thailand and near the Vietnamese border. The technical
school opened
in October 2011 for young people from Kep, Kampot and Takeo
provinces
and began with a group of 40 in the sections of social
communication
and hotel skills. Only 4 of those did not complete their
course. Those
who left at the end of June for training, have found different
jobs
especially in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville in hotels, radio
stations,
television channels and web development companies.
With the Graduation Day, the Don Bosco Technical School closed
for
vacations and it will re-open after the Pchum Ben Festival on
October 7
with new programs. The hotel skills will have culinary and
food and
beverage; there will be an art communication & graphic
design
program, office administration (formally secretarial) and
agriculture.
The Don Bosco Kep Children Fund intends to increase its number
of
children in the region, taking care of the most vulnerable.
150 new
students will join the school by October to reach a number of
250.
---------------------------------------------------------
Bess Wattchow, an Australian Cagliero Salesian Volunteer at
the Don
Bosco Battambang school has provided an
extensive four page write-up of
that event, which took place a month earlier. Here we offer
merely the
beginning and conclusion of this.
Bess says:
In an open hall,
which was once the entirety of Vithayalai Don Bosco
Battambang, the
first Official Graduation Ceremony took place on the 9th of
August
2013, and was attended by the schools staff and students, as
well as
the students’ parents.
Invited to attend
and take part in the ceremony, having arrived from Phnom
Penh the day
before, were Fr. Cef Ledesma and Fr. Leo Ochoa. Fr. Leo
Ochoa was there
to witness the First Opening of the School in 2000 and now
the First
Official Graduation Ceremony in 2013.
Offering Formal
Education to 565 students, Vithayalai Don Bosco Battambang
has been
officially recognised as an educative institution. On the 20
th of
March 2013 Vithayalai Don Bosco Battambang was proclaimed as
such by H.
E. Sar Kheng, in the presence of city hall officials, the
Department of
Education Authorities and the general population of
Battambang.
The
first Official Graduation Ceremony
of
Vithayalai Don Bosco Battambang was as much an opportunity
for
recognition, as it was for awareness and action. Here, every
staff
member and every student is fighting for education – not
with fists or
hardened words but rather with an unrelenting hopeful spirit
and smiles
so bright you would believe they had never seen sadness or
suffering.
Not only education
for life – learning to read and write, to finish school, to
find a job
and a secure livelihood – but also education being the first
step to
life, a life with some of the burdens lifted. There is a new
hope here,
that is allowed to be in ways that before could not have
been possible,
with every child standing for their education to life.
-------
This year Salesain Cambodia became a Delegation. It is
not
difficult, from the two brief reports above, to see the
enormous
contribution being made to Cambodian youth by a handful of
Salesians,
ably assisted by local staff and international volunteers.