Harmony and generosity: Piacer Canto Chorus supports Bayon School

by | 11 Sep 2024 | Primary school, Social and families support

Last March, the Piacer’ Canto Chorus honored us with three exceptional concerts. These performances, organized in support of causes close to their hearts, raised funds for three associations, including L’École du Bayon.

Thanks to this fund-raising effort, our school was able to carry out several crucial projects that will directly benefit our students. Firstly, we were able to renew the computers in our elementary school and our bakery and pastry school. This new computer equipment provides our students with modern, high-performance tools, essential for their learning and preparation for a promising future.

In addition, part of this generous donation was used to replace the batteries in the solar panels at the elementary school. This project, vital to ensuring continued access to electricity, is part of our commitment to sustainable development and responsible management of our resources.

We would like to sincerely thank the Piacer’ Canto Chorus, as well as all participants and donors, for their unfailing support. Thanks to you, Bayon School can continue to offer quality education and a brighter future to our students.

Discover how the Bayon School integrates art and culture into the heart of its educational program !

Discover how the Bayon School integrates art and culture into the heart of its educational program !

by | 11 Apr 2024 | Agroecology training, Bakery and pastry school, General education, Primary school

For 7 years now, our school has had the pleasure of welcoming Gilles, a talented artist specializing in creation using recycled materials. Every year, he travels to Siem Reap to propose unique artistic projects to our Pastry School and Primary School students. For three weeks, in collaboration with our teachers, he imagines and realizes artistic installations designed to improve the daily life of our school community.

Two years ago, Nathalie, an artist specializing in driftwood creations, joined this initiative to enrich our joint project.

The previous year, their creativity transformed our café’s environment, adorning its walls with magnificent paintings.

This year, their vision focused on creating a warm reading space for our pastry students, both in their classrooms and in their dormitories. Their project includes building a library and furnishing the space with mats and cushions, inviting relaxation and literary discovery.

As for the Primary School, our director Vanta has come up with an equally inspiring project: a giant KHMER alphabet created from unused tires, offering a playful and innovative approach to language learning.

At the Bayon School, we firmly believe that art and culture are essential elements of education, and we’re proud to see our students flourish through these creative initiatives.

Offering these artistic activities to our students every year allows them to open up to new horizons, to discover their talents and to develop their skills.

We look forward to seeing them again next year !

Welcome to the Bayon family !

by | 10 Apr 2024 | Agroecology training, Bakery and pastry school, Coffee Shop, General education, Primary school

Marie returns : Agroecology expertise for new horizons

Back in France to complete her studies after a year spent at the Agroecology School, Marie returns to us with her agronomy engineering diploma in hand, specializing in agroecology. Drawing on this experience, she brings a holistic approach to agricultural development, enriched by a network of agroecology players in Southeast Asia that she has built up through her travels and encounters.

A true enthusiast, Marie loves to pass on her knowledge of agroecology. She does this enthusiastically through participatory workshops, study tours, experiments and demonstrations, as well as various communication media. We look forward to sharing with you the many projects she is planning for the coming months!

Welcome back Marie ! 

 

After working for an organic certification body in Latin America, Juliette is continuing her exploration of the world of agroecology by joining us in Cambodia.

With a degree in agri-food engineering, Juliette began her career working for major agri-food groups. In search of a mission combining agroecology and social commitment, she wanted to participate in a sustainable, healthy and safe food system for consumers. That’s how she came to join the Bayon School family.

Agroecology quickly became an obvious choice for her. Juliette works with us to develop local, healthy and safe food products for the elementary school canteen and our solidarity coffee shop.

From producer to consumer, she aims to control food safety.

A warm welcome to Juliette!

Jean Pierre & Michèle

Jean Pierre & Michèle

by | 10 Apr 2024 | Agroecology training, Bakery and pastry school, General education, Health, hygiene and food, Primary school, Social and families support

Michèle, an executive at Danone Eaux (Evian), discovered the Bayon School when it was created in 1997 by Marcel Bertaud, Director of Danone Japan and co-founder of the Bayon, with whom she works. In 2006, Michèle and her husband Jean-Pierre, a doctor by profession, came to Siem Reap with Marcel Bertaud to visit the Bayon School. It was an unforgettable experience, as close as possible to our beneficiaries.

In 2016, they decided to invest in the Bayon School by supporting the education and health of young people. Touched by our pupils, sensitive to the need to ensure their long-term quality education, and aware that good health is an essential condition for their development, Jean-Pierre became the NGO’s medical referent, assisted by Michèle. The Bayon School has become like a second home for them. In Siem Reap 6 months a year, they take care of the annual medical check-up of all our beneficiaries, namely :

  • 184 elementary school pupils
  • 20 female pastry-making students
  • 20 agroecology students
  • The program team

The health and well-being of individuals are fundamental to their personal development and their ability to lead active, productive lives. As part of our mission within the organization, we have undertaken a series of actions to promote health and provide social assistance to those in need. This report details our efforts in these areas over the recent period.

Health

The introduction of health check-ups for all students and beneficiaries is one of the pillars of Jean-Pierre’s health initiatives for the Bayon school. This initiative aims to detect potential health problems at an early stage and provide the necessary interventions to ensure students’ well-being. He has been running a dental follow-up program for all students for several years. It has also provided complex medical follow-up for several students with specific health conditions:

  • Colostomy for an elementary school pupil
  • Medical care for an agro-ecology school pupil suffering from a spinal injury following a traffic accident
  • Medical care for a student from the pastry school with a leg injury requiring surgery
  • Medical care for a university student suffering from tuberculosis

Thanks to its network of competent doctors built up over the years, it is able to offer comprehensive medical care and recommendations tailored to each individual case.

 

Social

In parallel with their healthcare initiatives, Jean-Pierre and Michèle conducted an in-depth survey of the needs of the students’ families. Working with our social team, in particular Romain, they identified the challenges these families face and implemented concrete solutions. Among notable achievements, they facilitated the installation of sand filters and latrines for 160 families, improving their living conditions and environmental health. In addition, they assisted social workers to strengthen their skills in responding to families’ needs in an emphatic way.

Administrative management

As part of their activities, Jean-Pierre and Michèle also collaborated on the implementation of the “Team Desk” management tool, which facilitates the coordination and monitoring of our actions (social, educational, health). This platform enables us to manage our resources efficiently and ensure better communication within our organization.

Specific intervention: “Run Ta Ek

Jean-Pierre and Michèle know our families well and visit our students’ villages every year. Deeply concerned by the recent displacement of several families in Run Ta Ek, they decided to monitor the families’ conditions of displacement, in order to assess with the NGO’s social teams their needs and provide the necessary solutions in terms of housing, health, social and educational support.

The aim was to help them achieve sustainable autonomy by strengthening their resilience and providing them with the resources they needed to improve their quality of life. Thanks to this work, the École du Bayon teams, together with Jean-Pierre and Michèle, identified the help these “former” families needed (assessment of assistance, identification of partners, action plan and budget). All this was done with the aim of giving the students and their families the means to get out of this precarious situation, an essential anchor to be able to study in good conditions and give birth or rebirth to their future projects.

  • Every 6 months, we come back to the Bayon School to help out – it’s an addiction we’re not trying to cure.
  • Our involvement is amply rewarded by the smiles of the families and the joie de vivre of the pupils.

Michèle and Jean Pierre

Creation of a practical garden at primary school

Creation of a practical garden at primary school

by | 26 Dec 2023 | Primary school

In recent months at the primary school, a project to create educational, fun and ecological vegetable gardens has emerged in co-creation with teachers from the agroecology school.

This project aims to raise students’ awareness of ecology and the environment, while introducing them in a fun way to simple market gardening practices. Through these gardens and vegetable patches that children draw and design accompanied by their teachers, they can experiment, learn and express themselves at the same time.

Tang Meanrith and bayon school
orientation event bayon school
pastry school orientation

Some educational spaces are designed geometrically and are accompanied by small signs giving the names of shapes in English and Khmer. Learning combines geometry, gardening and language learning, all in a fun way.

These vegetable gardens also aim to supply part of the canteen’s needs. The children therefore find on their plates the vegetables that they have planted, seen growing and harvested. The soups are composed of eggplants, beans, salads, rice, aromatic herbs and a mushroom greenhouse, enough to offer healthy and balanced meals during meals.

Tang Meanrith and bayon school
orientation event bayon school
Art worshops in Bayon schools!

Art worshops in Bayon schools!

by | 19 Apr 2023 | Bakery and pastry school, General education, Primary school

We had the great pleasure to welcome Gilles in March, along with his friend Nathalie, for art and creation workshops in our primary school and pastry and bakery school.

Gilles, a young retiree, is passionate about art, especially wood and metal sculpture. As he says so well, “I hurt the metal so that it lives”. Gilles and Nathalie have worked with our students on several art projects.

First of all, at the primary school, the wall of Elodie’s canteen was decorated with fruits and vegetables as well as numbers in Khmer and English. This project was discussed with Vantha, the school director, who wanted to enrich the wall with educational and pedagogical elements. The students can now practice both languages. This project was carried out with students from Grade 1 to 6.

A mural with a natural decor was also created with the help of the school’s pedagogical team who were inspired by the nature present in Cambodia and around the school such as geckos, a beehive, birds, flowers…

The playground of our students was also redesigned, two new structures were created from rubber tires. The students dug the ground to be able to attach the tires in order to create a course as well as 2 racing cars. They then painted these new cars in the colors of Cambodia!

In addition, in the pastry and bakery school art projects took place around the use of wood. The students worked on what pastry and bakery represented for them. Then, they drew their representations on wooden logs and made engravings using a pyrography machine. Afterwards, these creations were assembled to create a composition in the garden of our Coffee Shop.

The students let their creativity run wild and painted our pond with a “nature” theme. They had fun painting water lilies, flowers, fish and turtles.

In a perspective of renovation and improvement of our visibility, the wall that borders the street leading to our Coffee Shop needed a good refreshment. To do so, the students and the pedagogical team of the pastry and bakery school cleaned the wall and then repainted it in the school’s colors! We decided to add a little fantasy by illustrating some of the pastries and drinks offered on the menu of our Coffee Shop.

Art workshop pastry students

For Gilles, sharing with students is always an unforgettable moment. As Charlie Chaplin said, “Children have talent, it’s just a matter of showing it”. These workshops have allowed our students to express their creativity and talents. They are now proud to see their creations displayed in their respective schools. Bayon School aspires to further develop these extra-curricular activities with the aim of stimulating curiosity and developing their ability to imagine and interact.

Once again, we would like to thank Gilles and Nathalie for their time, support and investment at our side. We look forward to seeing you next year for new projects!