About this Project:
Seametrey Children’s Village has been running for 15 years. During this time we have educated over a thousand students aged 3 to 14 years old, the majority of them from poor families.  The school is located in the countryside of Chambork Trop Village, 30km from Phnom Penh. We moved here from Phnom Penh in November 2015.

Because of budget constraints at the time of construction and for natural ventilation, the walls of the classrooms were built with bamboo mats. As time goes we realized there are many disadvantages to the use of this light materials: 1) The material is not sound proof. So the noise interferes with the teaching and makes it hard for the children to concentrate. 2) Some children were rough, bumped or poked into the walls making holes so the place looks untidy and ugly.

We would like to pull the bamboo mats and use them for ceilings and build brick walls instead. The bricks will be double laid, remain raw and un-plastered to allow them to breeze and air to cool. We have done so in the most damaged classrooms. There’s need to upgrade two more classrooms and convert the outdoor space connecting them into a covered patio as it is flooded during the rainy season.

About This Organization: 
Per Seametrey – “Seametrey’s founder, Muoy You, was born into a very poor family. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to power, and Cambodia went to hell. Approximately 2 million people died from execution, starvation, diseases or land mines, among them Muoy’s own parents and siblings.

Muoy was lucky enough to be in France at that time, on scholarship from the French government. Her late husband and she lived in exile for 31 years.  All that time they looked for an opportunity to come back to help rebuild the educational system.  In 1998, Muoy founded Seametrey, a Khmer acronym for Freedom, Civilization and Love, in Cambodia’s urban capital.  By September 2007 it had a burgeoning primary section & an English language section for youth. In 2014, the school moved to a remote primarily farming area about 45 minutes outside of the city.  As ever, the school’s policy is social integration. Parents pay according to their income. Some parents pay full fees, some pay 50%, others pay what they can, in cash, in-kind or in service. The school has now 300 students.

Seametrey’s mission is to build human excellence to lift Cambodia out of corruption. Its goal is to make quality education accessible to the less fortunate. It works for a profound, structual change in Cambodia.”