Director's Appeal

The director of Al-Muhajirin School / Al Muhajirin Association for Cambodia's Islamic Education Development has come up with these proposals to be implemented in the near future:

1. We wish to build a small mosque in the compounds of the school for female students. The building shall be 20mx15m in width and length. The cost of constructing this mosque is estimated to be around 20,000 to 25,000 USD. This is discounting labor costs since our students have ample experience and skills in this area.
2. As the number of students has been increasing rapidly on an annual basis, a new hostel for the students would also be needed (25mx10m comprising of 10 rooms). 8 rooms will be allocated for female students, 1 room to be used as a small cooperative retail store and the other room shall be used as an office. The estimated cost for the construction of this hostel is estimated to be around 45,000 to 50,000 USD.
3. We also would like to build a 2-storey library for the students of Al Muhajirin. The first floor shall house the books while the second will be used as a computer lab and to conduct computer classes. The cost to build this is estimated to be from 35,000 to 40,000 USD. Again, our students are skilful in constructing these buildings thus, these costs are purely for the construction materials. The library and computer lab are very important elements in the process of learning and knowledge seeking.

Introduction

As evidently captured in the above photo, even coconut trees were reduced to mere blackish stumps.

Ma'ahad El Muhajirin was established in 2001 by Ustaz Zainal Abidin. With approximately 600 students, it is currently the second largest madrasah in Cambodia.

Currently, they are in dire need of books after a misfortune befell their school where a few months back, several dozen buildings were completely destroyed in a fire.

Apart from monetary donations, clothes, writing materials, stationeries, books and even fabric would be most welcomed.

They have a couple of dozen sewing machines but didn't have enough materials to sew. Why do they need this, you ask? Well, they are also taught sewing so that they'd be able to use the skills to supplement their income once they've graduated from the madrasah. Unless of course, they managed to get a better placement overseas to continue their studies. I believe they also sew to help sustain the school.

What about computers? They do have plans to teach IT skills to the students but it is not a priority. They have limited power supply and there's no phone line for them to get connected to the internet. Nevertheless, donations of PCs and notebooks would also be very much welcomed.

Probably, to help them further:

1. Using a sponsor-a-child program as a model, we could profile each and every student to be sponsored by individuals and corporations for them to get the basic necessities and to further their studies
2. Provide a better infratructure for them in terms of utilities such as electricity and running water. We could provide diesel-based motor engines and generators and use bio-diesel instead. They could make they own bio-diesel from used cooking oil. How about solar panels? Would that help?
3. Get the professional nashid exponents to help them form a nashid/nasheed group. Hopefully proceeds from sales of their nasheed CDs could further help sustain them.
4. and Hey! How about biogas for cooking and illumination? I saw some Indian scientists conducting research and consequently built the infrastructure back then in 1998, if memory serves. It was not until sometime in mid 2000 that European farmers started their own initiative and was given a much larger news coverage. Rudimentary as it was, the one in India was perfect. The methane gas, I heard, was a tad smelly though (:P) -- But not according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas) ... But they do have the resources and ehemm.. "raw" materials... you know, from the cows and buffaloes and guess what, ponies and horses! The dung would be great for producing methane.