CCF E-learning Program

Children in impoverished communities are severely affected by the economic crisis and prone to school dropout amidst the global pandemic COVID-19. All of the educational institutions have been closed, which leads thousands of children to lose access to education. Keeping children in education is the most urgent matter that needs to be solved. 

Creating an e-learning management system that is free and can be easily accessed by everyone and everywhere is the best solution to ensure vulnerable children can continue their education amidst the global pandemic. An e-learning management system that is an integrated system using free online open sources is the best option for educational institutes that cannot afford an expensive system.

The Steung Meanchey community might be one of the most inequitable environments in the world. It’s not just poverty but also the degree of social fracture due to the Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 19070s. Families scavenged day-to-day on the landfill because they got themselves into unavoidable debt. Families faced the trade-off between sending their children to school versus putting the food on the table, money for rent, or servicing their debt.

COVID-19 has adversely affected everyone around the world, including Cambodia. Steung Meanchey has been severely affected community following the largest outbreak in Cambodia. The areas were declared as Red Zone. Residents are forbidden to leave their homes, putting many in a more vulnerable situation than ever before, they are unable to work or go out for food.

Children are the most vulnerable during the pandemic. From early 2020 until now, all the schools across the country were closed. Thousands of children are prone to school dropouts and behind their academic year. This leads to several social problems including increasing child illiteracy, child marriage, child labor, etc.

To ensure that children are still able to continue their studies, an immediate solution to keep children in education is the most prioritized. CCF E-learning Program was initiated to move all the physical learning activities for secondary and high school level online by using the available resources and platforms on the internet including Google, Facebook, Telegram, and YouTube. 

Students were given email addresses to access the online classes. Class materials including homework and handouts are shared on Google Classroom while all the online teachings are delivered on Google Meet. CCF education team including teachers work together to create teaching materials. Some materials are based on the YouTube channel of the Ministry of Education, Youths, and Sports.

To maintain the communication and peer interaction, each class create an online group chat on Facebook Messenger and Telegram as an alternative option.

To ensure the quality of teaching and learning, the academic team is divided into different groups to observe and evaluate teaching activities including online class, homework, and grades. All the meetings and discussions are held online via Google Meet, Hangouts, and Gmail. Orientations and training are provided to teachers and students on how to use the resources.

The beneficiaries of the solution are the children in the vulnerable community in Phnom Penh who previously did not have an opportunity to go to school like other children and have been severely affected by the pandemic. Before CCF intervention, more than 60% of the targeted families CCF works with never sent their children to school or had but later pulled them out of schooling to work. The remaining children were receiving an education but were at high risk of being pulled out of school due to a lack of financial stability in the family.

Online learning has become another challenge for them besides struggling to earn income during the lockdown. Several studies have shown that students have difficulties in learning online due to their family’s financial problems, lack of electronic devices, lack of access to the internet, and lack of well monitored and controlled online learning. Only 2.7% of children have access to electronic devices such as laptops or tablets and only 37% have access to the internet (World Vision, 2021).

To maintain the quality of the e-learning program, CCF has set out a clear monitoring and evaluation plan to observe the teachers’ activities to ensure the quality of teaching and learning. CCF also has supported groups to provide immediate assistance in terms of technical support and family assistance. The ICT team provides support to teachers and students related to how to use the platforms and resources. The attendance team is in charge of students’ attendance and ensures that students attend the class on time and regularly. The social affairs team provides assistance to the students’ families when they have difficulties enabling students to attend their online classes.

The short-term impact of the solution is that the students are able to continue accessing high-quality education amidst the pandemic; therefore, they will not miss their school year and be able to finish high school and go on to university. The CCF education curriculum and teaching approach are designed to align and fill gaps in the public school curriculum, and ensure all students under CCF care thrive and excel in their education, and become competitive candidates in the workforce.

The long-term impact of the solution is the majority of students graduating from university and getting a decent job with the capabilities to deal with real-life challenges to become young professionals in various fields; especially STEM fields. The aim is that they become leaders in their chosen careers, become leaders in their community, and lift their families out of poverty. These young individuals have the potential to overcome challenging starts in life, a testament to CCF’s belief that education has the power to end poverty -  from working on a garbage dump to studying at acclaimed international universities in one generation. It is an extraordinary milestone that no one could believe; that one of the most impoverished slum communities in the country could have such a high rate of university graduates.

The solution also impacts their family’s lives through CCF’s robust poverty reduction model which is based on three key principles:

1. Education is Key - access to education is critical for breaking the cycle of poverty. 
2. Remove the Barriers - addressing child labor, healthcare, and gender inequality is also required. 
3. Build a Community - we provide children and families with a safe and nurturing environment, re-instilling pride and respect in a fractured community.

Our solution primarily increases the engagement of learning remotely. Students are given the distance learning package weekly while the academic team maintains the quality of teaching and learning as high as in-class learning. 

The social affairs and attendant teams provide immediate support and assistance to the student’s parents when they need it.

Everyone interacts with each other through social media platforms including Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Google Meet. 

ICT team provides technical support including conducting orientation and training for students and teachers to ensure that they fully understand the functions of each platform.

Since the opening in 2017, the CCF’s flagship operation, the Neeson Cripps Academy (NCA) provides students with integrated learning that links together different concepts across all subjects. Innovation, exploration, and creative thinking are in how disparate and unconnected pieces of information are joined together to enable a new viewpoint that has not been seen before.

The technology club is part of evening STEM clubs. The club consists of Animation, Design, Media Production, Adobe, Robotic/ Arduino, and Technovation clubs. The Saturday Projects are for students to run their projects to showcase their initiative technology ideas. 

In 2020, CCF female students won the "National Grand Prize" in Technovation Cambodia. Their winning pitch was for an app that brings traditional Khmer stories to new young audiences.

In 2019, our students won 1st place in the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) National Competition and were funded to represent Cambodia at the International WRO in Hungary.

Many of the solutions that aim to support vulnerable communities, especially women and girls, focus on solving one specific problem. However, social problems are complex. We cannot deal with a certain issue without dealing with other issues. Most at-risk children often fall through gaps in narrowly focused programs. While these programs usually can reach many beneficiaries, these gaps are barriers keeping Cambodia’s poorest citizens from entering or accessing public and social services. As for online learning, it is a challenge for children to solely focus on their online learning while their families are having difficulties in losing their income, debts, emotional turbulence during the pandemic. Therefore, CCF does not only focus on online classes but also on children’s family issues and other issues that distract them from being able to concentrate on their online studies. 

The e-learning program is an integrated program from all available open resources that have already been provided for free on the internet. The use of separate platforms to form a learning structure in a way to create an interactive learning management system that is easily accessible by everyone without paying. The innovative part of the solution is ensuring a high-quality outcome through a quality management framework to control the progress of the online learning activities. To maintain a high quality of online learning, the program primarily solves students’ family issues to ensure that students can solely focus on their studies.

Currently, 454 students are doing online learning from grade 7 to grade 12. The indirect beneficiaries are the students’ families, community members which are around 5,000 people. 

In five years, the solution is estimated to serve more than 1000 students who are currently at the primary school level. The indirect beneficiaries are approximately 10,000 people which includes the number of students’ families and community members.

• A high retention rate of secondary and high school students/ low dropout rate
• A high pass rate of the students in the national exams (Grade 9 & 12)
• A high transition rate of the students from high school to university 
• Increased number of students join STEM club/class
• Increased number of students choosing STEM subjects at tertiary level
• Increased number of graduate students working in STEM careers
• Increased number of students giving back to their community (volunteer and donation)
• Increased number of teachers’ professional capacity training and development

• 58 Full-time Teachers (3 ICT Teachers)
• 19 Full-time Academic Staff: 
  • 1 School Manager
  • 1 Education Manager
  • 1 Academic Manager
  • 1 Academic Officer
  • 2 Academic Coordinators
  • 1 School Operation Coordinator
  • 3 School Operation Officer
  • 1 ICT Coordinator
  • 1 STEM Coordinator
  • 1 STEM Officer
  • 1 Librarian
  • 1 Project Assistant
  • 4 Education Assistants

Scott Neeson, Executive Director and Founder of CCF, has gone out into the community at least 6 nights a week around the former biggest landfill in Phnom Penh for the last 17 years. He maintains ongoing communication with the community members, connecting with as many people as possible, trying to understand their needs and how he can help. The majority of CCF’s Senior Management team are Cambodians who have several years of experience in working directly with the community at the grassroots level plus years of experience in education, community development, and welfare. CCF’s first employee, at the time a young local female educator, is now the most senior member of staff as Country Director, after Scott Neeson. 

CCF has been working on the ground to tackle the complex issue through various points of contact in the community. CCF’s education program was awarded as one of the world’s best initiatives in innovative education by the “Transformative impact on education and society” award from the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in 2012.

CCF has been providing education and community services to the most at-risk Cambodians for 17 years. The most marginalized people who have been supported by the CCF are females including girls, women, and grannies. More than 90% of CCF staff are Cambodians with diverse backgrounds. It is also important to note that the organization's country manager is a female who oversees all the operational programs and management of the organization. Moreover, CCF has an anti-nepotism policy to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity. 

Our team works directly with the families every day through various points of contact throughout the community. CCF has also established a Student Committee at each CCF’s schools to get feedback from the students, listen to their concerns and needs. For example, a group of students is currently piloting a waste management project in some of the villages. The project was raised as a concern, with solutions developed, by the students as part of a human-centered design workshop to address problems in their own community.

CCF has created a powerful and effective mechanism for poverty reduction and community development, producing a young generation of leaders with the belief, skills, and knowledge to build a better future for themselves, their families, and their country.

The model works by removing barriers and creating opportunities for those marginalized from society to work together to create positive change. Our approach intrinsically allows for replication within a flexible and culturally responsive framework. 

Putting our model in the hands of Solve has the potential to revolutionize the global approach to lifting the world’s poorest from the most arduous of lives.

Human Capital: CCF is seeking partnerships to support the teacher capacity development, staff professional improvement to run the e-learning program efficiently. Providing professional and quality training to teachers is one of the CCF’s aims. Investing in teachers through skills training is an investment in the students.

Financial: Funding support is crucial for CCF to sustain the program and to ensure the long-term outcomes of the program. 

Public Relations: CCF is also looking for partnership opportunities for the organization branding, broadening the organization's network for further cooperation to scale up the project at a wider level.

CCF would like to partner with the technology companies that we are currently using their software and social media platforms to run our e-learning program. These includes: 

• Google
• Facebook 
• Telegram 

The potential partnerships with them would allow CCF to have a greater understanding and flexibility of their software and platforms because as end users we might not know all of the advanced tools to utilize the functionality to use it more efficiently and effectively. Having professionals from the above-mentioned technology companies to train CCF staff as well as students on how to use their systems would advance our solution. 

CCF would be very grateful to have their assistant and support in providing technical skills to our overall operations, and capacity development training to our teachers and staff to enhance the quality of e-learning for our students. 

Workshops and class projects with these companies’ employees would help our students understand more about the real-world application of their studies. App creation, coding, robotics, and even introduction to artificial intelligence would add to current studies. Presentations and seminars from all areas from technology application to marketing would provide a much-needed understanding of technology needs in the workforce.

The solution has been implementing in one of the most impoverished communities in Cambodia to transform the impoverished community into a smart and sustainable community to provide quality STEM education to the most at-risk children through an innovative e-learning program that is freely accessible for all. The GM Prize will help to sustain our E-learning Program to achieve our long-term goals and allow us to scale up the solution in another community.

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The primary goal for the solution is to provide an access to quality STEM education via available resources on the internet to all the vulnerable children in the most impoverished communities in Cambodia. The CCF E-learning Program is an innovative solution to ensure that those children are still able to receive quality STEM education despite the global pandemic and economic crisis. The solution not only focuses on keeping the children in education but also helping their families when they need it.