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The PEPY Team Journal
PEPY is featured in Emirates newspaper
02.07.09 Written by pepy
PEPY is featured in Emirates newspaper. So great to see the familiar faces together once again.
download the article
File under: PEPY Press
Lesson Learned: If the donors are driving (especially if they are blind!), you are bound to crash!
30.06.09 Written by pepy
by PEPY Executive Director, Daniela Papi
The ideas we are sharing with our “Lessons Learned” section are not new, there are whole books written on these topics, but they are new lessons for us, lessons we have learned first hand over PEPY’s initial four years in Cambodia. We wanted to write a few of these lessons down so that we can share some of our insights and hopefully highlight some of the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ behind the decisions we make.
In our last “Lessons Learned” article, we discussed how NGOs are commonly rated, some of the flaws we see in those systems, and ways in which we can vote more efficiently with our donor dollars. We also talked briefly about asking more of the NGOs we work with in terms of information and transparency. This leads into some grey areas: what is the line between a donor asking more of their NGO partners and a donor “driving the bus”? When donors are driving, especially ones who are not on the ground to experience the impact of their decisions, are projects more likely to crash and fail? In what we have seen in our time in Cambodia, we believe yes. Yes, indeed.
As mentioned in the previous post, if a granting body puts strict restrictions on how the project is done or sets their own metrics for success without input from those on the ground, it might end up demanding a process that is less efficient than it could be or results that are impossible to achieve. In other words, by their own actions the granting agents are often limiting the impact of the dollars they donate.
Some Examples:
File under: Lessons Learned
Improving the English Classroom
30.06.09 Written by pepy
by PEPY Teacher Trainer, Kyla Solinger
Intensive teacher training for PEPY’s English teachers has been underway for a month, and we have been making changes large and small, ranging from color coordinated classrooms to the beginning of “PEPY Points,” aimed to motivate students and encourage attendance and participation.
Gone are the days of sitting in rows. The tables are now arranged to seat four students and are categorized by color. Myself, and the teachers are hoping that this new seating plan will encourage teamwork and responsible behavior in the classroom. We’ve seen positive improvements already as the Pink table in Sarakk’s level 0 class is taking their role as mini board monitor extremely seriously!
Read more: Improving the English Classroom
File under: PEPY News & Updates
Teaching culture: from bucket showers to the backstroke
30.06.09 Written by pepy
by PEPY Teacher Trainer, Kyla Solinger
Tickets are finally booked and 4 Chanleas Dai students and 2 PEPY staff are going to camp! Now we come to the preparations… Where do you begin when preparing four children from rural Cambodia for the USA? They’ve never even been outside of their province before, let alone the country! Asked to help prepare them for the differences in culture they might encounter, I went back to the beginning:
For those of you that haven’t seen a Cambodian shower, it’s not what you might imagine as a shower. You use a pump and a bucket, wear a sarong and you are, usually, clearly visible to the rest of the household, if not the village. The kids looked at me with horror as I told them that hot water would fall on them like rain as they stood naked in an enclosed space! Imagine the further confusion when I showed a picture of a western toilet and gave details of where to sit and how to flush. I even explained to the boys how to be little gentlemen and always lift the seat.
Read more: Teaching culture: from bucket showers to the backstroke
File under: PEPY News & Updates
Room to read-ing
30.06.09 Written by pepy
by PEPY Executive Director, Daniela Papi
Last week, PEPY played host to a global team from Room to Read
This workshop was two years in the making. Two years since we first approached Room to Read and offered our view of the current library system in
I was nervous for this meeting, which is rare as I have a tendency to probably under prepare for most things and “wing it.” With this, I wanted everything to be prepared and planned and solid. We were lucky to have Jennie on our team the past few months as she was able to take our varied ideas and thoughts and put them into a presentation structure that made sense, and we were lucky to have our whole team working full-time on classroom library projects for a few weeks before. Even the night before the meeting, I coerced Rithy, Anna, Kyla and Thavry to help me make more examples of classroom management tools which could be included in the classroom library models (making wall hangings and book report forms late at night made me feel like I was helping my mother as a child as she stayed up late the night before parent open-house day at school, cutting out beautiful letters to make “WELCOME” signs on doors and “You’re a star!” areas of the wall).
File under: PEPY News & Updates
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