On 23 March 2022 Phare Ponleu Selpak hosted a roundtable discussion on child protection and the promotion of positive discipline for children under the topic, “How to Apply Positive Discipline at School”, with seven guest speakers, including Mr. Chhun Ramy, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) and Mr. Teng Visal the Deputy Director of the Provincial Office of Education (PoE) in Battambang and representative of a few public schools. Student representatives participated in the audience as well.

Here at Phare Ponleu Selpak, we believe strongly in the power of the arts to change lives. And science is on our side!

Pagna comes from Ang village in Battambang Province, very close from Phare campus where he is working as a Project Supervisor for Phare Creative Studio. Despite his young age, he has been involved in Phare for already 20 years!

It’s been more than a year our visual arts students have been on and off school following the Government’s protocol as the pandemic spread over the Country. We had shown you back then how the first home confinement had provided Phare artists with time to reflect on this huge wave affecting us all. While Cambodia is facing a new outbreak, they have been expressing their insights and their appeal to pay closer attention to protect ourselves and others. Have a look at their latest works!

“My family’s connection to Phare, as I came to learn, dates back to the 1980’s when my father, as a Member of the Executive Committee of one of the resistance groups at the Thai-Cambodian border, had an oversight responsibility of the civilian affairs of all the refugee camps the group was overseeing, of which Site 2 – where Phare founders grew up and started drawing classes – was part of.”

After the most difficult year in our history, including the closure of our circuses with disastrous impact on funding, we have triumphed against the odds to win four gold awards at the Stevie International Business Awards (IBAs)! Phare has just been recognised once again for our audacious 24 hour circus World record attempt and fundraiser.

This June 2021, the Cambodian Ministry of Education announced that all schools will remain closed and children will continue learning through online classes. For rural and less privileged communities, it still means a lot of active participation from teachers and parents to compensate for the lack of access to internet and digital devices, and the long term gap it is digging to reach back the standard education level all children are entitled to get.

Phare is still taking an active role in the ‘Love Does Not Hurt Campaign’: a three-year advocacy campaign launched in 2020 to push for an end to Humiliating/Corporal Punishment and to promote Positive Discipline in the Southeast Asian Region. In May and June, our social support team conducted a new series of awareness sessions in 16 villages of Battambang Province, to which more than 330 persons attended. You might not be familiar with the concepts of Corporal Punishment and Positive Discipline? Read our article to know more!

This pandemic has brought the inequality and inequity in education to the forefront. While we did our best in extending kindergarten classes to the communities with “home” schooling, this reality gave us the motivation to take a fresh look at our Kindergarten serving 200 children.

History was made at 08.10AM on Monday 8th March, when no less than 90 Phare circus performers took a final bow after a continuous circus performance that lasted 24h, 10min and 30sec in a stunningly ambitious Guinness World Record attempt in the category of Longest Circus Show.