Empowering Cambodian kids Josie Steenhart talks to Denise Arnold whose Tauranga-based trust now supports 23 schools across the South-East Asian nation.

We’ve bumped and lurched down a long red dirt road, our Cambodian driver skilfully maneuvering around the biggest of the crater-sized potholes. Someone in the mini-van points out that the patchwork of rice paddies we’re passing were also killing fields, though she can’t remember the number of bodies found there. It might have been 30,000 or 300,000.

We pull up to what looks like a series of longabandoned buildings. The only clues it’s a school are a handpainted sign and a rusty swing set in bright primary colours, a motley collection of bikes, and the rows of small sandals lined up on the dusty concrete.

As we spill out of the air-conditioned van – a group of women from New Zealand already beginning to sweat in the intense, humid heat – from somewhere in the collection of cracked and faded concrete structures, across the bare ground, comes a handful of smartly dressed men and women carrying coconuts.

The coconuts are standard Cambodian-style refreshment at its finest, lopped from surrounding trees right before serving. Our coconut-bearing welcome party turns out to be the school’s principal and head teachers.

By now, a scattering of children have also emerged, or peep from the glass-less windows, their faces full of curiosity but no surprise – Denise Arnold and her crew are regular visitors.

A visit from CCT (Cambodia Charitable Trust), Arnold’s Tauranga-based NGO (non-government organisation) set up in 2008, spells hope.

This school, one of 23 being supported by the Kiwi trust, has already benefited in myriad ways that could seem insignificant, even non-issues, in a New Zealand school. Unsupported schools often lack everything from desks and chairs to pencils and paper – even trained teachers.

‘‘We started with providing support to schools to enable them to develop libraries and give the teachers some teaching resources – and supporting children who would otherwise not be able to attend school, by giving them uniforms and stationery,’’ says Arnold.

‘‘We began with two schools, but this steadily grew and then we started sponsoring the most atrisk children, those who were going to be dropping out of primary school imminently if we couldn’t help the families to provide food for their children.

‘‘Gradually, we started installing toilets and clean water, to reduce the number of children getting sick and dying. We set up libraries and a system to loan books, fixed broken classrooms, developed a set of swings and later a playground. Everything has been a slow, careful progression, as we have always been short of money,’’ she says.

From directly supporting kids and providing school infrastructure and amenities, they then started providing training to teachers and to those training the teachers.

‘‘We started helping two teacher training colleges and developed a sharing system where the trainers we invested in shared their knowledge with the teachers in the schools we supported. It was a new model, but one that has shown huge results,’’ says Arnold.

‘‘The first time I saw a teacher actually teaching and the children being engaged in their lesson as a result of this training, I was overcome with emotion.’’

What’s perhaps less quantifiable, but equally as powerful, is the ripple effect – or spiral, as Arnold describes it – that the changes CCT are

Denise Arnold implementing is having on whole communities.

‘‘The teachers have enthusiasm and hope – and the children see that – and then the community notices and gets involved with the school which, in turn, encourages the teachers more and the children come to school from far and wide and the whole spiral continues,’’ Arnold says.

CCT’s approach is multi-tiered and this small group of New Zealanders (mostly women, mostly over-50, all volunteers paying their own way) are playing a significant part in the transformation of the Cambodian education system, from grassroots right up to government level.

When I first meet the CCT posse in Phnom Penh, before we set out in our van to visit schools and training centres around Cambodia, Arnold and company are fighting their jet lag to spruce up and head out for dinner with Cambodia’s Secretary of State, Nath Bunroeun. This is the big league.

‘‘Unlike many of the NGOs working in Cambodia, CCT gets to know the stakeholders at all levels personally, and work with them, seeking their input and advising them of our plans,’’ says Arnold.

‘‘Over the years, the impact CCT has been having has resulted in recognition that our programmes work and we have achieved far more than our size might give rise to expect. We punch way above our weight. CCT is now seen as a ‘go-to’ organisation.’’

Petite, chic, sweetly spoken, often with a twinkly smile, Arnold isn’t exactly the picture of a steely lawyer, let alone a modern-day superhero, but she is both of those things.

So how did the Tauranga mother-of-two find herself blazing trails across a country 10,000 kilometres away? In 2006, with her daughters Emily and Tegan then at primary school, Arnold read an article on child sex slavery in Cambodia.

‘‘The thought of those children being taken away and having goodness knows what done to them was just so awful I needed to act,’’ she says.

‘‘I spent that year researching the country and, in 2007, went to Cambodia specifically to find out how I could make a difference.’’

Despite the preparation, Arnold’s first visit to Cambodia deeply shocked her.

‘‘I was shocked by the number of children begging on the streets, by the amount of filth and the sheer sadness and lack of hope,’’ she says.

‘‘I found the hopelessness the hardest thing to witness. I’ve never been in a situation where I have no hope, where I haven’t known someone would help me if I couldn’t help myself. I’ve always had choices and support around me. This was very hard to see.

What also shocked her though, was how little it would take to change lives.

Arnold describes Cambodia as ‘‘like some bizarre social experiment’’ into what would happen if a country’s economic, social and family systems were thrown out almost overnight. Because that is what happened.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime, under the leadership of Pol Pot, wiped out at least 1.7 million people, a quarter of the population, targeting ethnic minorities, religions, anyone suspected to have former military or government ties and anyone considered ‘‘educated’’. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, journalists, business leaders, and students disappeared, and schools, hospitals, medicine, money and electricity services were all targetted.

A United Nations investigation thought the total number of those who died was between two and three million, while Unicef say it’s at least three million. More than 20,000 mass graves – the killing fields – have been discovered.

‘‘The fact that this all happened – millions were killed, starved or worked to death while I was growing up enjoying a happy, secure childhood – seems somehow to connect it to me. I feel it’s my challenge to help right the wrongs,’’ says Arnold.

‘‘I remember seeing Pol Pot on television when I was a child. No-one understood what was happening in Cambodia and the sheer human tragedy that was unfolding. All the teachers, doctors and lawyers who were being systematically killed. The children who were being worked, or beaten to death.

‘‘CCT’s manager, Soeun, who is one year younger than me, was in a work gang under the Khmer Rouge while I was playing with dolls and refusing to eat brussels sprouts. Our lives couldn’t have been more different. And the battles raged on into the 1990s. This was happening on my watch. People who have become very dear to me, my international family, were starving, brutalised, terrified and growing up without families – and without education. Soeun didn’t start school until he was 16. By then, I was finishing high school and heading to university.’’

Arnold says the sheer amount of need in Cambodia was initially almost overwhelming, but she simply made a start.

‘‘On my first visit to Cambodia, I visited a primary school and a teachers’ training college. The first things I paid for were mosquito netting in the teacher trainees’ dormitories, to have a computer fixed at the teacher training college and clothing to get children to school,’’ she says.

‘‘I talked to a lot of people and decided that access to education was a huge issue. The main impediment was simply $10 worth of clothing and

‘‘I couldn’t have coped with all of the confronting things I’ve seen in Cambodia without being able to be part of solving them.’’