The Prey Veng Students
Of the 12 students that CT enrolled into university in October 2010 under the Nippon Foundation scholarship, nine of the successful candidates were clients of Veterans’ International (‘VI’), one of our partner organisations in the physical rehabilitation sector.
Like us, VI successfully operates a scheme to support children with disabilities through school and last August, my colleague Chin Da and I visited their facility down in Prey Veng province which is close to the Vietnamese border.
In the end, we enrolled all of the students; seven into Chea Sim University of Kanchaymear (CSUK) and two into Svey Rieng University. In addition to there undergraduate studies, funds have also allowed us to enrol all of our new clients into English language and computer skills courses as well.
At the end of February 2010, we went down to visit the students to see how they were progressing. Also in attendance in our party was Noun Sgoun Kanika, herself a person with a disability who is working with us on this program having returned to Cambodia after successfully completing a masters’ degree in America.
As much as doing well in their studies is of primary importance, it is also important that their time at university is a positive one in terms of a life experience and that they do not suffer any harassment or discrimination.
It was great to hear one after another confirm that they had not had encountered any problems since enrolling. Staff and students alike had treated them equally and without difference. This is indeed great to hear because as I understand it, this group were amongst the first people with disabilities to enrol in their universities and so to hear that they had not met any problems is encouraging on many other levels.
Two of the students are wheelchair users and so the inevitable question regarding accessibility issues arose. I had been to CSUK the year previous and any notions of it being mirroring a UK campus would be a little off centre. It is in effect, a mansion house converted into a university and so those things UK students with disabilities take for granted in the form of assistive devices and practices are a long way off in Prey Veng province.
However, two things that CSUK deserve credit for and which again, gives us hope for the future. A number of make shift ramps were in place to facilitate entry for our wheelchair using clients. But the real inspiration came in their proactive response to the disability law.
Article 30 of the law states that people with disabilities should get a discount on their tuition fees and that the rate of this discount is to be set by subordinate legislation, which has yet to be set. Whereas other universities we know have said that they will not give a discount until the relevant law is passed, CSUK gave our clients a discount of 25% when we asked for it.
That played an important part as did the excellent work of our partner organisation in allowing us to get an extra two students on to our scholarship program.
It is of course, early days and our clients still have end of year exams and a further three years ahead of them to contend with. But with the support we have all provided thus far and their own considerable efforts then there is a lot of hope for the future.
Indeed, the ‘future’ was very much part of the theme of our visit. After I had ascertained how the present was going I let Kanika share her experiences and how education had played the key role in her success and what she had managed to do despite her own disability and at a time when making headway as a person with a disability was not considerably more difficult then it is today in Cambodia. It is what we want to see with our own students talking to the next generation coming through about what they have achieved not just in education, but hopefully in their working lives after graduation.
John Honney, Disability Rights Adviser
March 2010, Phnom Penh
