The Steve Sinnott Foundation Response to COVID-19 Crises in Phnom Penh
Nicola Palairet is the Partnership Development Director for Flame and
has been working in Phnom Penh for more than five years now.
Life for the marginalised families living in Phnom Penh’s slum
communities is tenuous at the best of times. Flame staff identify
families whose children are unable to attend school because of
financial pressure. We give these children the opportunity to go to
school. For many it’s not just a chance for education, it’s a radical
change in their life’s trajectory. Without it, these children would
be unable to break out of the cycle of poverty. SSF and Flame are
partnering to make a difference in their lives.
While official cases of COVID have been remarkably low in Cambodia,
closing borders and the overall shrinking of the economy has led to
massive losses in the tourism and hospitality sectors. COVID-19 has
increased stress and financial hardship significantly. For some, there
has been the threat of homelessness; for others, a decrease in daily
wages has impacted the ability to put food on the table. Incomes
for those ‘at risk’ is so low that hunger was already a serious issue
pre-COVID. So, even when a family recognises the importance of
education, food is the first priority – and school takes second place.
Many children have a deep desire to learn in school but are prohibited
by the financial strain on their families. We have sought to address this.
Children who in the past have had to work to support their families
or provide care for younger siblings are now regulars in school and
attend the Flame After School Centres daily where they laugh and
learn, as well as get a nutritious snack and have their own toothbrush!
There are computer classes for the older kids and daily literacy and
numeracy lessons for each child. The centres are clean and bright, and
the teachers who have also come from hard backgrounds, appreciate
the challenges of education for these young kids. They know exactly
what it’s like to face huge obstacles and overcome them. This is what
we call ‘The Full Circle’.
As a young child, one of the children in our program, Sokea, walked
the streets with a huge plastic sack of recycled bottles on his back.
His recycling work to support his family left him no time for school. At
home, his dad was on a small daily wage as a motorbike taxi-driver and
his mother was bedridden. When we first met him at 9 years old, he
told us that he would love to attend school. He had previously been in
school but had to drop out to support his family.
We visited his parents
and asked permission for Sokea to attend public school and our After
School Centre. We said we would supplement the family for the loss of
Sokea’s income and they agreed. When finances were tight, however,
his family continued to send him out to collect plastic, but this is
often part of the transition from working to education. The family and
Sokea understood the importance of regular school attendance but
making school a daily priority was hard.
Sokea has now enrolled at the University of Management to study law. He works part time for Flame
and is a kind and conscientious guy who actively comes alongside
other kids and encourages them to stay in school.
You can read more
about Sokea on the Flame website:
www.flamecambodia.org/blog/sokea-from-collecting-plasticbottles-
to-university21/1/2021.
The Steve Sinnott Foundation has partnered with Flame to support
children of the urban poor in Phnom Penh who struggle to access
education. SSF has provided school supplies for 250 children.
From Engage edition 22.
Nicola Palairet • July 12, 2021
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.
