PEPY Voices: PEPY’s Chan Chhorvy Hay shares her passion for teaching and leadership

by Vannak Lach and Stephanie Boegeman

We’d like to take more opportunities to share the experiences of our PEPY team members who work to promote education and empower youth in the Chanleas Dai area. To this end, we’re introducing a new series of articles highlighting their contributions. This month, we kick off the series by introducing Chan Chhorvy Hay, one of the many individuals who worked behind the scenes to put together this year’s Literacy and Math camps.

Chhorvy has been working with PEPY as an Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL) and School Leadership Trainer since April 2011. She explained that ETL and leadership are her passions: “I am already old. I want to pass on the knowledge while I can!” She added, “I love sharing my knowledge directly with other teachers and children, because I believe it is more effective than sharing with them by documents.” By passing on information in person, she can add any explanation that students might need.

The field of Effective Teaching and Learning requires time to do research and find different techniques to teach. Gesturing to the colorful origami decorating the classroom where she works, Chhorvy explained that "building human resource needs patience and a long time to get the result; it’s not as easy as folding paper-made flowers."

Chhorvy is a member of the technical team at PEPY. This team observes school and classroom performance and provides training to principals and teachers. Their goal is to help schools create Child Friendly Schools, a strategy that Cambodia’s Ministry of Education is currently implementing.

Some of the components of Child Friendly Schools involve using found materials such as plastic bottles for lesson plans, helping teachers make more effective lesson plans, and including more games into classwork. Chhorvy’s extensive expertise in ETL is invaluable when creating environments which encourage children to learn.

Chorvy has worked in ETL and leadership with public schools since 2002. She was an inspector at Education Department in Pailin province before she came to work at PEPY. Now that she is part of the PEPY family, she hopes to gain experience in NGO work, improve her skills, and continue to share her knowledge with others.