Among the kids taken care of by PSE, there’s some whose families live too far away from Central PSE in Phnom Penh, some whose families are not safe enough to let the children live with them and some others who don’t have their families anymore. Those kids are pensionnaires – boarders – at PSE, meaning they live in the safe and secure environment of PSE the whole year long. And for them, a custom-made project is created every summer.
“This camp is for those kids who cannot spend their summer at home and who are already at PSE the whole year.”
Indeed, as explains Paty who is monitor for the third time this summer, these children live in PSE, so they already played every and any game the monitors could offer and cannot really explore the city or have free time outside of the campus. That’s why, every summer, their monitors and coordinators give their best to imagine new activities and outings. “This camp is for those kids who cannot spend their summer at home and who are already at PSE the whole year.” explains Iñaki, the coordinator for the Pensionnaires program.
The pensionnaires’ activities format is closer to workshops: they last an hour and are not only in and outdoor games. Two times a week, the pensionnaires stay in Central and attend these workshops: cooking classes, educational workshop or sport sessions for instance. From 3 years old to 16, everyone takes part the same way to all of these activities.
“There’s educational workshops about anatomy or geography for example. Krom muy (“team one”: team gathering the youngest kids) was given papers with some countries’ names and they had to place it right on a mural map.” tells Paty ; and according to Sou Ret who is Khmer monitor for the first time this summer, educational workshops are necessary during the summer programs: “Education and love need to goes together for the children development. They need love to keep inspire their will and need education to improve their understanding and analysis skills.”
The pensionnaires are creating a whole new vegetable garden within PSE’s walls.
For the first time this summer, a new project is developed: the vegetable garden. Thanks to Margaux and Enguéran, the pensionnaires are creating a whole new vegetable garden within PSE’s walls they’ll have to keep taking care of once the summer programs will be done. Cambodian kids are very manuals and it is even more obvious when seeing them tilling the soil, sawing bamboos or planting seeds.
According to Iñaki, “This is different. There is no ball, no room, no paper. It’s more than an activity, it’s a whole project they’ll have to maintain after the summer camp”. The pensionnaires volunteer to come, so that only those who are really willing to get involved in this project come. “And if they are so involved it’s because, with these kids, when you teach them they’ll help you a lot!”
The kids are full of dreams and hearing them loud is a very positive message for everyone.
Also, a new kind of workshops is getting developed this summer: emotional intelligence ones. The objective of these is to make the kids talk about their emotions so they can recognize them, adapt their behavior and it often leads them to talk about hard situations they lived. It is particularly relevant for the pensionnaires as some of them entered the Pensionnat because of what they had to face in their own families, under their parent’s roofs.
“It is not easy for them to speak out loud about what happened, what problem they have faced, and the hard things they keep in their minds.” confides Paty. Talking about their feelings help the children to move on, to open up their minds to new opportunities as they are not haunted anymore by what they were keeping for themselves. It also allows the monitors to understand them better. One of the Pensionnaires’ kids, Lyheang Hang, explained what she got from one of these sessions: “The love emotion will bring me working hard on my studies. It is the same when you lose something, you may need someone to give you a hand and lead you and inspire you to always keep moving forward. More than blaming you and make you want stop trying.”
The workshop ended asking them what gives them hope. And that is the most beautiful part of it: the kids are full of dreams and hearing them loud is a very positive message for everyone.
The excursions are important because we give an opportunity to the children they don’t have in their daily life.
The pensionnaires also enjoy the summer camp to do a lot of outings: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday they go to the museum, to the cinema, they visit temples or enjoy an afternoon at the waterpark for example. For them, these outings are the opportunity to get a bit out of PSE and to learn more about the city they live in, about their country with its specificities in terms of religion or patrimony for instance; but also to have fun differently than with the games they usually play. “PSE’s Summer Camp creates a new environment to entertain us after the hours of school time. It is an opportunity for me to explore new places through outings and have fun with lots of activities.” says Soun Sokunthea, pensionnaire. In addition to these outings, as every summer, the Pensionnaires’ program will bring the hundred of children to Kep, to spend three days not only outside of PSE, but also outside of Phnom Penh, at the beach
For Iñaki “the excursions are important because we give an opportunity to the children they don’t have in their daily life during the rest of the year. Giving them this opportunity to go out and get to know cultural and educational places around PSE is very enriching for them.”
The pensionnaires have a very specific relationship between us, as they are family for each other. It really is touching to see how the oldest are careful about the youngest. They also share a lot with the specials – disable kids, who also live in PSE. It’s quite common here to see them playing together. And during the summer programs, the very small and young kids from the Kindergarden project also joined the games sometimes as for the water party on Thursdays’ afternoons which is always a big success: “It is the happiest moment ever! I am super happy because I could play the water game with my friends and monitors”, Oudom Junior Julie.
In August, the Pensionnaires share their home with all the European monitors coming to help the Summer Program.
PSE is definitely the Pensionnaires’ home. Being a monitor in Phnom Penh, whatever the project, means also living with them. And, in August, the Pensionnaires share their home with all the European monitors coming to help the Summer Program. These children walking, or should we say, running in PSE Central share the place they live in for a month and are always up to play soccer or basketball, to share their prayer or to watch a movie at night with the 160 European monitors living next to them.
“They got closer to their monitors because they live with us, we can get in touch with them in the evening too, for the prayer for example.” says Juan Carlos, European monitor for the first time. “You are not only the coordinator during the eight hours of the camp, you are almost all day long. When you see them for dinner or when you meet them at the prayer, you don’t stop being their coordinator.” confirmed Iñaki.
They share it, but not only, they also welcome them and make them some room to feel comfortable in Cambodia, they mobilize their best skills in English to communicate and learn from the European monitors, they show a lot of patience trying to teach a few words of Khmer to them. Irene, 1st year monitor for Pensionnaires, concludes : “It is very specific being a monitor for Pensionnaires, because you can meet them at anytime outside of the program’s schedule as they live here. It’s their place and yet, when I came to the prayer, a lot of kids came to me and I just felt like home.”
It is without any surprise that pensionnaires often become monitors a few years later: they grew up surrounded by PSE’s values, learning English and Khmer, they got used to be with the European monitors and, above all, they say they want to give back or share a bit of everything they received from the NGO who protected and educated them for years.
PSE would like to thank 1001 Atmosphera for their economic support to the Pensionnaire’s project.
