I'd personally been wanting to take our foster children to Angkor Wat for some time. The Angkor ruins are the nation's greatest cultural heritage and national pride. However, there are still big differences in the content of education available depending on the region, and also there are still many people who can never have the opportunity to actually visit there in their lifetime even as adults. Especially for people of the island where the foster children live, it is not easy to travel to the mainland and the city center of the same province. But still we believe that it's important to deeply experience the history and cultural background of one's own country, so we finally started a project to take our students from the upper grades on field trips to Siem Reap province, where the magnificent world heritage is located.
Thanks to the generous support of foster parents, we are currently able to provide support to 49 children from this target area, and this time we were able to take 9 of them from middle to high school ages.
A tour guide took them around the ruins with detail explanations. We visited Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm Temple, and at Angkor Thom, we explored the South gate, Bayon Temple, Baphuon, Phimeanakas, and the Terrace of the Elephants. Since the rain started, we just received explanations of the Terrace of the Leper King while passing by there. There are a lot to see in Angkor Wat alone, but just feeling its grandeur must have been a valuable experience for these students.
Afterwards, we went on a tour at a social business facility established to solve the problem of poverty in the nation. That enterprise produces traditional handicrafts and has been one of famous brands of Cambodian souvenirs. We listened to the enterprise's history and observed process of some handicraft productions.
Though it was only for a few-day trip, we expect that the students have broadened their horizons by learning about profound history and various ways of thinking. We'd like to continue this project so that we can provide more children with such experiences.