I wanted to share a story of change from our Peaceful Education project. This story came specifically out of the Peace Club pilot and was collected by our MER Coordinator, Mr. Mok.

A white shirt with a blue skirt or blue trousers is the sight of six grade students who attend Svay Chor Primary school in Svay Chor village, Prey Knesh commune, Me Sang district. It is away from the district center by 9 kilometers. From grade 1 to grade 6, the Primary School has 414 total students (183 girls). There are 11 full time teachers at the school (6 are women).

The Svay Chor Primary School has been partnering with MCC Cambodia since 2017. Support has included teacher coaching, non-violent teaching methodology, classroom supplies, organizing the community support the school, child protection, literacy, and education through electronic material (tablets). In 2022, Svay Chor began piloting Peace Club lessons.

Chan Trea is the 12-year-old student who is studying in grade 6 at Svay Chor Primary School. She currently lives with her younger sister, 6 years old, and both are taken care of by her old grandmother, 78 years old, who lives in the village near the school. Chan Trea’s living conditions depend on financial support from her single mother, who works at the Chinese restaurant in Phnom Penh with a salary of 35 dollars every month. Her father divorced her mother and abandoned the family three years ago, so Chan Trea never hears from him. Chan Trea is one of the 34 students (15 girls) who attends Peace Club sessions at Svay Chor Primary School. The instructor is MCC Rural Education Coordinator, Mrs. Chourn Maly, who travels about 43 kilometers from Prey Veng town in order to teach peace club sessions to 6th grade students for one hour every two weeks. So far, Chan Trea has attended four topics: Introduction to Conflict, Cultural Differences, Empathy/Exclusion/Inclusion, and Anger Management. She said that the lesson that she really valued and that had the greatest impact on her was Anger Management.

She shared that, “I am a person who gets angry easily. I often argue with other children at school and in my village who make me angry. I hate my father who divorced my mother unreasonably; I kept this hatred in my mind and kept on returning to my anger each day.” Because of her anger, Chan Trea has had trouble making friends with other children. She was always blaming her sister and grandmother when they did something differently than what she wanted. She was always getting angry and she didn’t want to be known as a troublemaker, so she tried just staying silent and avoided joining activities in class.

But that changed when she attended the Peace Club session on Anger Management. She suddenly understood why she was so angry all the time and during the session blurted out to her classmates, “I am so sorry for being so angry. Now I understand why I felt that way all the time. I kept my hurt to myself for so long and it just burst out on its own. If I talk about my hurt…then it won’t burst out. I didn’t know myself.” Her attitude changed so dramatically after the Anger Management session that the School Principal, Mr. Lay Yim, noticed. Now Chan Trea is talking to the other students and even sharing about her bad feelings. She practices talking to classmates and even dares to tell them about her bad feelings. She has worked to forgive her father and even tried to reach out to him, despite the fact that he hurt Chan Trea and her mother by leaving. She advises her classmates to think about the root cause of their problems when they do something wrong to her or to another classmate. She says to spend time thinking about the root cause of the problem and how the other person feels – are they in a troubled situation? Do they feel like she felt in the past. Now, Chan Trea loves to join classroom activities and she’s telling the younger students about the Anger Management session during the classroom breaks. She now joins the teacher in doing the school yard cleaning, planting flowers, and taking care of trees around the school yard.

“Next year, I am going to move to the secondary school, and I am committed to using the Peace Club lessons that I recorded in my notebook. I’m going to make new friends and introduce these ideas to them. I want to tell my story and what I learned in the Peace Club sessions that I had in my Sixth Grade class. Especially about controlling anger. Everyone should know about that and be aware of peace, and adopt it. Then our community and society will be different in the future.” Chan Trea shared when she was asked about her future and what she would be doing after she graduates from the Peace Club program.

Written by Aim Mok