Human resource development according to traditional Khmer and Buddhist ways is at the heart of KEAP's work in Cambodia. After decades of living in isolation and experiencing at times unspeakable horror, it is important for Cambodians to re-affirm their cultural identity and self-esteem as a basis for facing the outside world with all its opportunities and pitfalls. Cambodian society has begun the process of re-opening in the 1990s only to be faced with the lures of consumerism, corruption, the drug trade, and the sex (prostitution, child trafficking, pedophile, porn) industry. Although the international aid community has helped to improve living conditions, its commonly materialist (or, at the other extreme, foreign religious proselytizing) outlook has not been particularly helpful in charting a culturally sensitive course for the development of the country.

      A sense of living in a moral community that existed in the minds and actions of most Cambodians through the 1960s is, to a great extent, absent today. In its second decade of "development," Cambodia continues to be afflicted by a moral and intellectual paralysis and general sense of lawlessness that does not portend well for the future. Given the horrors of the recent past, a self-preservation instinct still looms large in the psyches of most people. At best, a sense of moral solidarity and constraint exists among more or less isolated family units and small communities in rural areas where Buddhist temples have been able to resume their traditional roles as teachers and guides for and on behalf of the people. KEAP believes that meaningful progress in Cambodia is a function of expanding the moral compass of the country through the Buddhist wats and Sangha, who have been the sources of regenerative forces in the past.

      An education is necessary that not only prepares the new generation, including and in particular the younger monks, nuns, and laypeople, with the skills and competencies needed to survive in the modern world, but one that does so as much as possible on Cambodian moral (i.e., Buddhist) terms. In a country that today remains more than 80 percent percent village-based and 90 percent Buddhist, the Buddhist wats and Sangha can play a significant role in revitalizing the country. Yet the potential of the temple is limited by a poorly educated new generation of monks and a Sangha still on its knees as a force in society. The monks are victims of the loss - through the mass killing, the trauma, and emigration in the 1970s and 1980s -- of an entire generation of learned monk teachers and scholars and by a government reluctant and Sangha unable to provide consequential educational resources. The education of monks that resumed on a modest scale in the early 1990s continues to be supported almost entirely by the meager donations of local people to their wats.

      KEAP has identified five program activities that promise to raise the educational levels for monks, and also nuns and laypeople, so they can resume their roles as moral guides; teachers of the Middle Way; and resources for community development that benefit all members of society, including and especially the neediest.

      Since 2002, KEAP has provided annual scholarships to 3rd- and 4th-year monk students at the Preak Sihanouk Raj Buddhist University who have demonstrated high academic potential and financial need. The project was piloted in cooperation with the Zen Community of Oregon, which supported two monks during the 2002-03 academic year at the university. The Buddhist Association of Cambodia, which maintains offices next to the university, has graciously administered this project by issuing monthly stipends of $20 to each scholarship recipient. The stipend is designated for learning materials and basic needs that allow top students to focus on their studies. In 2006-07, KEAP received enough support from sponsors to support nine monk students, who acknowledge and report on their studies to their respective sponsors. To sponsor a monk student in 2007-08, click here.

     Based on the success of this project, the Khyentse Foundation entered into an agreement with KEAP in 2006 to pilot a post-graduate scholarship program for motivated monk graduates of the Buddhist University to study at monastic universities in the region. There are as yet no possibilties for monks to study beyond the B.A. level at the Buddhist University in Phnom Penh. This new program has sent two former KEAP scholarship recipients to study for an M.A. in the Buddhadhamma at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka. The Foundation and KEAP are looking forward to awarding two multi-year post-graduate scholarships each year to qualified Cambodian monk graduates. KEAP is seeking additional support from donors to administer this program from its field office in Phnom Penh.

 
Both Ministry of Religious Affairs officials and monk students and teachers at the Suramarit Buddhist High School and the Preah Sihanouk Raj Buddhist University in Phnom Penh have spoken to KEAP about the low morale and quality of teaching at these institutions. Similar problems exist at other recently re-opened secondary schools in the provinces (Battambang, Takeo, Kampong Cham, and Prey Veng). The inability to adequately compensate lay teachers and mobilize edcuation resources are cited as the major problems. KEAP has assisted qualified and needy professors at the Buddhist University through one-time salary supplements. These modest cash awards provide recognition and help with retention of good teachers while attracting others. KEAP also seeks to provide the means to support language teachers (Sanskrit, Pali, English, French) from abroad. Khmer-speaking monks teaching at the Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University in Surin, Thailand, for example, have indicated their willingness to take teaching sabbaticals in Cambodia. In cooperation with the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which is among the most under-funded of all ministries in Cambodia, KEAP seeks to help subsidize their transfers to and stays in Cambodia to help with teaching and teacher training.

 
The Ministry of Religious Affairs in cooperation with the Sangha is seeking to reform the primary, secondary, and tertiary monk education curricula, which are based on outdated 1960s content, syllabi, and methodologies. An initial partial reform already implemented has marginally increased time for Buddhist studies by reducing the emphasis on the hard sciences. Commissions for each level seek to work with national and international Buddhist monk education advisors. The Ministry has repeatedly welcomed any suggestions, facilitation, or support of this process by KEAP.

 
Doun Chi, or lay devotee nuns, who observe the eight or ten Buddhist precepts, are found in or adjacent to many wats in Cambodia. They are usually elderly women, many of them widows who have raised families and who wish to repair to the wat to prepare for death. A small number are younger and have a life ahead of them. KEAP has found that the nuns as a rule are more mature, meditative, and serious about the Buddhadhamma than many among the new generation of young monks. Since October 1991, when KEAP sponsored and brought Khmer Buddhist nuns and laywomen in the refugee camps to the "First International Conference of Buddhist Women" held in Bangkok, Thailand, KEAP has assisted and facilitated initiatives to improve the status and role of nuns in Khmer society. The greatest needs expressed by nuns are for Dhamma study groups, and KEAP has encouraged and supported this process mainly by providing Dhamma books. With proper facilitation, these study groups can over time also become resources or foci for temple-centered social services such as temple-based day care or pre-schools (thus allowing mothers, women heads of households in particular, to learn or do productive work). Nuns can also provide counseling for destitute women, prostitutes, or those afflicted with mental trauma. KEAP seeks support for local Buddhist NGOs and associations to implement this process with facilitation and montoring by Cambodian KEAP staff.

 
Grassroots, self-help development based at the community level is a tradition that has been promoted by Buddhist temples in Cambodia and neighboring Theravada lands for centuries. Recent field research led by Dr. Walter Aschmoneit, working through the German development agency GTZ, and American cultural anthropologist Dr. William Collins of Phnom Penh's Center for Advanced Study has re-affirmed the existence of these hidden, informal structures of temple-connected community development in Cambodia. This people-centered development model stands in stark contrast to the monetized economic and industrial development models that began to be imposed on the country -- in part through the training abroad of national élites, in part by the international donor aid community -- following World War II. Although the importance of the social and cultural aspects of development are being gradually recognized since the mid-1990s by several United Nations agencies (including the World Bank), the realities of "globalization," "liberalization," "privatization," and "consumer" trends tell a different story. These trends (and pressures) serve to reinforce a development model that benefits rich individuals, transnational corporations, and first-world countries at the expense of the poor while undermining the natural and socio-cultural environments in which rural people in particular, still the bulk of mankind, have lived and eked out meaningful livelihoods.

       There are several Buddhist-oriented, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia who have emerged in the 1990s that seek to renew historical forms of self-help development that benefit people, in particular the most needy, at the community level. Among these are Samakithor (Dhammic Solidarity) and Buddhism for Development in northwestern Cambodia and the Self-Help Project in Kampong Thom province north-central Cambodia. Two of the three NGOs recently localized from international agencies and are now struggling to work on their own as training and community development facilitation organizations. Samakithor in particular has developed and used training modules and worked with monks and laypeople in two northwestern provinces in wat-connected community development. The three training cycles for these modules are "Community health, water, and sanitation," "Village economic and social development," and "Natural preservation and cultural development." Samakithor has also conducted functional literacy programs in "Buddhism and community development" for female heads of households in 11 temple community learning centers while helping these temples provide day-care facilities for the pre-school children of the participants. KEAP seeks to offer these and similar initiatives in Cambodia assistance with which to continue and expand their efforts.

Villagers deposit unhusked rice in new rice bank
facilliated by Samahithor, a local NGO,  in Pursat province