Cambodia has dedicated considerable resources to strengthening education over the last three decades, but many challenges remain, negatively affecting the learning opportunities for many children in Cambodia. Besides the many factors such as discrimination, distance to school, poor school environments, gender-based violence, language barriers, migration, child labor, poverty and family difficulties that lead to declining enrollments, poor attendance, and children dropping out of school altogether, Cambodia’s education system itself is still underdeveloped and under-resourced. It is still characterized by:

• a general lack of resources (educational, technical, and financial).
• insufficient and under-qualified teachers, high student/teacher ratios and reduced learning hours.
• substandard quality of the education provided (curricula, methodologies, materials and tools).
• poor learning outcomes.
• underdeveloped management systems.

A limited availability and access of reading materials and learning tools is one of the many fall-outs of these challenges, as is an underdeveloped teacher workforce. Though this situation prevents students from learning well and reaching their full potential, it also offers an opportunity for innovative ICT (Information & Communications Technology) to help fill this gap and improve the quality and accessibility of education.

Our Actions
Since 2012, “ICT for education” has been one of the cornerstones of Aide et Action’s educational development work in Cambodia. Ever since then, Aide et Action Cambodia has been mainstreaming inclusive technology to deliver quality education. From 2013 onwards, the Khmer LEARN project was implemented and it suite of e-applications rolled out to help improved reading, learning and teaching standards in Cambodia.

With this project we continue to harness the power of innovative ICT to further improve reading, learning and teaching in Cambodia, with the added focus of promoting STEAM education and making it accessible to Cambodian students. More in particular, we:

• improve literacy and build a reading and learning culture among children and adults.
• help enhance learning outcomes for primary and lower-secondary students by giving them access to STEAM. education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics).
• build a collaborative network and online platform that enables publishers, authors, and developers to create, distribute, and sustain diverse educational and STEAM content.