Improve reading abilities in Daem Po village

Daem Po is a small village, 90km south of the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. This is a community of over 200 families, living mostly from the work of rice paddies and coconut tree nuts.

Villagers elect every two years the village development committee members. It is an association independent of local politics that deals with social and economic issues.

In 2009, the village development committee wanted to create a library conceived as a book bank. This allows each villagers of all ages to borrow books. This project aims to increase opportunities for learning in the village and improve the general knowledge of the villagers.

They also established a system of lending books in their primary school: a series of books are given to each class and the teacher organizes the weekly turn-over. This system enables the books and all students of all classes.

This project was made possible by the french association for Solidarity and Tourism Vision du Monde, that gave 750EUR. This budget was used to purchase of books for primary school, for the village library and to buy a big cabinet to store the books.

Each villager can borrow a book for 200Riel (U.S. $ 0.05) per week. The half retained for bibilioteque responsible for holding the permanent weekly and the other half is used to maintain books.