ROTARY Club of Kerang hosted the recently returned participants of this year’s alternative schoolies trip to Cambodia, with the enthusiastic student crew having worked industriously to help improve the quality of life of families in Siem Reap, during two frenetic weeks.
Eight students from the Gannawarra shire were part of the group, with seven of those from Cohuna Secondary College and the other from Kerang Technical High School.
They were joined in Cambodia by four students from the Northern Territory.
One of the leaders of the trip, Sharon Champion, a former member of the Rotary Club of Kerang was part of the organisation’s first schoolies adventure to Cambodia in 2007 and has been on all but one of the now 13 organised trips.
Ms Champion said the original trip was the idea of a teacher at Kerang Technical High School, with the town’s Rotary Club agreeing to assist, but plans to travel to Sri Lanka were thwarted by a bombing at Colombo airport a`few months before the planned departure date.
It was therefore deemed unsafe to travel there.
A teacher visiting Kerang from the Northern Territory had spent time living in Cambodia and planted the seed in the minds of organisers that it would make a suitable replacement destination.
At the same time a relationship was established between the participating Gannawarra shire schools and the Northern Territory School of Distance Education, with that unlikely partnership continuing to thrive.
Ms Champion explained the group of schoolies teamed with three different non-government organisations in Cambodia to complete a range of hands-on projects.
Working with the Life and Hope Association, the group assisted in building two houses.
They worked with Green Gecko, building fences around that organisation’s farm which feeds more than 70 people.
“They have a farm called Footprints Farm and every year the Kerang Agricultural Research Farm funds us to do a project with Green Gecko in Cambodia,” Ms Champion said.
Green Gecko was started to provide shelter, food and education to street children in Siem Reap.
“It’s the original group of kids and their extended families,” Ms Champion said of those now assisted by Green Gecko, explaining the organisation has helped reconnect Cambodian families.
She said families who suffered the trauma of the Khmer Rouge regime were being taught skills at Footprints Farm, both in terms of functioning as a family and how to create and cook food.
