Our Cambodian partnership was established 8 years ago with an NGO (Non Government Organisation) called PEPY Empowering Youth - http://pepyempoweringyouth.org - which is based in Siem Reap in Cambodia. This partnership works to enhance the teaching and learning of Learn Together throughout DPETNS and improve the quality of education in PEPY. Additionally, it has provided an opportunity to empower all students involved to play an active role in global development. Since 2013, our teachers have travelled to Cambodia during the summer months to teach and to learn first-hand in Cambodia. A very important aspect of our partnership is that it is reciprocal and so, every year from 2015, we have welcomed Cambodians into our school community and to life in the Donabate community. Ten of these were students ranging in age from 18-20 yrs and the other eight were teachers and members of PEPY staff. Without a shadow of a doubt, these special visitors brought much happiness and joy to our school and our students benefited greatly from their visits. The success of our partnership can be seen by the fact that Kimsru, one of the teachers who visited us on the very first exchange to Ireland, completed her masters degree in D.C.U in 2017.
This year we are welcoming another four visitors on May 13th and they will be here for three weeks. Like before, they will stay with local families and will experience our culture and traditions first-hand. We have been so lucky over the years as the host families have been amazing and really looked after our visitors. They too benefited greatly from having a visitor stay with them and the children are always so proud of their special guest. An email has been sent from the school looking for host families again this year. If you feel that you are in a position to host a Cambodian visitor, we would love to hear from you. It is an experience that you definitely won’t regret!
Please check out our school Instagram account @donabate_portrane_etns where you can see photos from our previous visits and can read more about this wonderful partnership. Please also find an article written by Aidan McGoey, a parent who visited PEPY with his family in 2018 http://cambodiaireland.com/wp/a-parents-view/
Our email address is cambodiadpetns@gmail.com or jenny.stanley@dpetns.ie , please get in touch if you have any questions or queries. We’d love to hear from you. You can also check out our FAQ below for any questions you many have about becoming a host family.
