Ground-Breaking Ceremony for the new Kon Ray Ethnic Minority
Boarding school in May 2007. Photo by Nam Nguyen.

Project Description
EMW is building a large boarding school for ethnic minority students in the district of Kon Ray in Kon Tum Province. Kon Tum is an impoverished province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam where the average family annual income is between $110 and $120 per year (the poverty line nationwide is set at $240 per family), and educational attainment is very low. It is likely that no more than 10% of local students finish 10th grade.

One hundred percent of the 250 students at the school will be from ethnic minority groups, mostly the S RA, Ba Na and Xe Dong. There are other groups living in Kon Tum province, but these three groups make up the majority of the communities near Kon Ray district.

Ground broke for the new school in May 2007. The school will open in 2008. The Kon Ray Boarding School will serve 250 secondary students in grades 6 to 9. It will be located in Dak To Lung Commune, Kon Ray District, Kon Tum Province.

The project is funded by the US Agency for International Development, and the school is made possible by the generosity of the American people.

Program Background
New school facilities are desperately needed in Kon Tum. However, building small schools to serve scattered, low-density villages is often not effective. Distances from students’ homes to school are too long for many students to walk twice a day, it is difficult to find teachers to work in remote areas, and most students in the area do not speak Vietnamese as their first language. Therefore, boarding schools are preferred by local educational authorities as a solution that creates a much better learning environment with improved educational outcomes.

Searching for ways to overcome the difficult circumstances that lead many students to drop out of school at a young age, the local government of Kon Tum in coordination with the University of Da Nang, which has been given the task of improving educational outcomes in Kon Tum, have asked EMW to assist by constructing a boarding school in Kon Tum. EMW will build the boarding school in close partnership with local authorities and the local community.

John Anner, EMW's executive director and Brett Jones of USAID with the children in Kon Ray that will be served by the new school. Photo by Nam Nguyen.

Goals

• Improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged ethnic minority students in Kon Ray District, Kon Tum province, defined as increasing daily attendance rates, lowering the drop-out rate and improving the promotion rate from lower secondary school (9th grade) to upper secondary school (10th grade)
• Develop valuable skills in students at the Kon Ray Boarding school to better enable them to become productive members of society.
• Improve access to education for disabled students in Kon Ray District, Kon Tum province.
• Create opportunities for local families to improve their family incomes, develop new businesses and improve their farming techniques

The primary goal of the school is to greatly improve education outcomes for the students in the area, and thereby improve their long-term life prospects. The Kon Ray Boarding School will significantly increase the capacity of the local families to obtain a high-quality education for their children.

The Kon Ray boarding school will offer training and education for the physically disabled. The school will be handicapped-accessible, and offer special classes in both regular education and vocational training suitable for children with physical limitations. In addition, the Kon Ray boarding school will provide hands-on training in income-generating activities to enhance the ability of the students in the boarding school to become economically productive members of society.

The Kon Ray boarding school will also offer hands-on training in valuable skills for the students. These include carpentry, sewing, computers, English and agriculture. With these skills, the students will be prepared to become productive members of society even if they do not continue on to high school and college.

 

For More Info

To get involved with EMW School program, contact the EMW Development Team at info@eastmeetswest.org.