PEPY Ride School

About PEPY
PEPY stands for “Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself". http://www.pepyride.org/ PEPY Ride School is the labour of love of Daniela Papi and Greta Arnquist, two very inspiring young women who started the project from their experiences of travelling in Cambodia. It started as a group of bike riders cycling around Cambodia teaching school children about environmental protection. It soon grew into a bigger fundraising project cooperating with the NGO called American Assistance for Cambodia/ Japan Relief for Cambodia, an organization that has built over 250 schools in rural Cambodia since 1999. PEPY began building a school in about 1.5 hours drive from Siem Reap. PEPY also equipped the school with desks, funded a water pump, vege patch and greenhouse, computers, and a very exciting solar panel!! (see what else on the website)

I started as a volunteer fundraiser in Australia in July this year for PEPY. My chance to check out the school and other PEPY projects was with the first PEPY volunteer trip scheduled for December 05-January 06. This is actually the main reason why I am in South East Asia right now, while combining Vietnam, Laos and Thailand while I can!!

The Volunteer Trip 31 December to 6 January
The Volunteer Trip spanned over a week where 30 of us (Many of them English teachers living in Japan) based ourselves in Siem Reap and commuted out to the school most days to work with the children and on the school grounds.

Opening Ceremony
The first day we were there was the opening ceremony for the new classrooms that PEPY built in cooperation with the Japan American Assistence and the Asian Development Bank. It was an extremely emotional morning where the overwhelming welcome and warmth from the Kerela (Amatya Sen fans – I am seriously not kidding!!) people . Most of them had not met foreigners before, and to have a bus load descending upon them was quite a shock to the system. There were 13 nations represented: We all got to introduce ourselves and our country, and it was just the most proudest moment of my life when I stepped out for Taiwan with my flag. (see previous post)

The week consisted of the following activities:

Teaching Activities
- each volunteer “buddying up” with a 4th grader – mine was a girl called Pinh. We spend a few hours with them talking to them and get them to know us. Which proved to be quite difficult as we couldn’t communicate and the kids were mostly really shy.
- English lessons – out in the field and in the class room which they just loved
- Art and craft classes - I coordinated the arts program – we gave them crayons and colouring pencils which many of them hadn’t seen before
- Sports - we also gave them soccer balls and frisbees etc)
- Environment and hygiene - Clean up rubbish competition, and teaching them how to brush their teeth

Classroom Upgrades
- Desks – which we donated were sanded
- Decorations, a lot of which were contributions from Japanese children
- Gifts to the school: books and stationary, including a special edition of Harry Potter in Khmer – which JK Rowling gave special permission to translate and publish

Ground Projects
- Greenhouse – contracting students from a nearby Agricultural School also run by an NGO to train homeless kids
- A water pump – water comes straight out of the pump so kids don't have to exploit the lily pond at the back of the school
- Vege patch – already completed, to feed the staff and some kids that may need to travel a bit
- Paving and Fencing – PEPY volunteers to complete
- Other gardening
- Solar Panel – to be completed - I was disappointed to not get my hands on the solar panel as it had been late, but hopefully the March and August Trips would yield some pictures for me!!
- And A FANTASTIC MURAL which a Japanese school girl designed and we painted on the walls

It was really really hard work as we were working right through under the boiling sun. Every day was a grilling bumpy ride out and in from the school and usually I was covered in mud – but when we left we knew that it was a huge achievement for us and appreciated by the whole town immensely. What is most fantastic about PEPY is that it’s a continuous commitment with the School. There’ll be another trip in March and another one in August already planned. I will certainly be continuing to fundraise and advocate on behalf of PEPY and keep you all updated with their progress.

More extensive photos on the PEPY site: http://www.pepyride.org/gallery/index.php

Follow the PEPY Riders (they began on January 10th)
http://www.pepyride.org/journal/journ.html