Nine year old Srey Ream told a room full of school directors, teachers, community members and staff from Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, whyshe liked to learn to read and write. During a launch ceremony of the project ‘Total Reading Approach for Children (TRAC)’, innovative plans for reading were presented. The project, which is implemented by World Education and KAPE will run in 8 communities and schools in Kampong Cham and Siem Reap province. In these schools, teachers and parents will work together to improve the level of reading and writing in grade 1 and 2. Guided by a community based literacy coach, the project aims to map the level of individual students with quarterly assessments. Through a competition from All Children Reading, a project funded by USAID, World Vision and Australian Aid, Cambodia became one of the countries to win a grant to promote literacy education and technology. Mr. Ul Run, the program manager, explains; the project is supporting the new reader that is developed by MoEYS and is used in primary schools. TRAC will provide training on regular assessments and will support a literacy coach to assist the schools and communities in reading activities for the children.

These are very creative ways for them to practice with what they have learned on schools.’ During an opening speech, Mr. Chan Sophea the Primary Education Department head tells that many children in Cambodia hardly read and write after school due to lack of resources and lack of knowledge of the education process by the parents. It is a persistent idea in some areas that education should be left in the hands of teachers only. This is a problem that TRAC will address by creating a Reading Toolkit for each school with literacy games, reading books, stamps, puzzles and more. The project is also developing educational software that can played on Smartphones and Tablets. As a pilot, the schools will be loaned 20 phones and tablets that can be used by the students and their parents to practice the curriculum as they learn it in their Khmer lessons. Together with iLearn4Fun, an American based company, the application will be fully developed in Khmer and, after completion, will be available to download for any parent or student who wants to use it. During the afternoon, it became clear that many participants of the workshop are eager to be involved. Whether it was the commune council chief in Chi Kreng district who would advocate for budget, or the librarian who already applied for the job of Literacy coach, reading will definitely get a lot of attention in the coming 2 year of this project.