Spreading the Lessons We Learn through Teaching Teachers

By Daniela Papi

We are learning so much here—through our mistakes, our successes, and the people and programs we meet along this PEPY path. The first on our list of goals for PEPY Tours is to "Offer educational tours that inspire people to be more responsible donors, travelers, and global citizens," but spreading that impact without growing our tours too much is a difficult task. As such, we partnered up with Where There Be Dragons, an organization we respect immensely that has set the bar for educational travel for youth, to design the first "Cambodia Educators Course on Development." This course for teachers was designed to model the experiential education approach of both Dragons and PEPY to teachers through the framework of development in Cambodia, and inspire them to then go out into the world and share these ideas with their students.  

We did our first course with an exceptional group of teachers who represented elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, and university, as well as a librarian. The instructor team for the course consisted of three PEPY people (Yut, Rithy, and Daniela) as well as Claire Bennett, a Management Advisor at our partner organization CRDT.  The group visited a range of NGOs and communities to learn about some of the issues, barriers, and definitions of "development". The group shared some of their lessons and feelings through Dragons' "Yak Yak" board, and we encourage you to read their powerful and beautiful thoughts. 

We were honored to get to work with these amazing teachers and with Dragons on this course, and we look forward to doing courses like this again in the future!