GCL: Construction, construction, construction!

Our Global Community Leadership (GCL) team partnered with Utah State University to award participants with upper-division college credit upon the completion of a 5-month long hybrid curriculum and a two-week learning experience in Cambodia. Read about their experiences and learning developments below. Click here to learn more about GCL.

 Committee Work – June 1, 2017

We are in Pursat, Cambodia working with Sustainable Cambodia. Sustainable Cambodia is an organization that works with millions of people all around Cambodia. They help provide people with water, loans to start businesses, general health, education, and much more. It is an honor to be able to work with and give back to an organization that helps to many people.

We have been working on a variety on construction projects with the SC team. The first project we worked on with the team was clearing out an area of land next to their library to start a garden. Once the project is complete, the garden will provide food for the students and staff on the SC Campus. We all worked together as a group to move their reading hut to a more shaded area of the campus, so that the kids have a more comfortable area to read. We tore out the tiling under the hut and then we all picked up the entire hut structure and moved it across the campus. It was quite a sight to see, almost 40 people were helping to carry the hut across the campus. It took us about 30 minutes to move it 100 yards. The power of teamwork helped us carry a 6,000 pound structure with our bare hands.

We also had to pull out all the concrete foundation for the old hut location, it was 3 feet in the ground! To keep the hut in place with dug holes to the foundation and then poured concrete pillars to keep it stable for years to come. We tore down an old fence on the edge of the property and reconstructed it using natural and recycled materials. We used coconut palm trees for the posts and reused the chain link from the old fence to help keep the children away from the river that runs along side the school.

The SC Campus has a lot of problems with flooding during the monsoon season so we have been working on elevating, leveling, and grating the grounds on campus. This will help prevent future floods and create better water drainage. As we were working on removing the dead trees from the campus we broke one of the tuk tuks! We tied a rope around the tree and then connected it to bumper of the tuk tuk and when we started to drive the tuk tuk it was too much weight and broke the drive line. Opps!! Sorry SC! Don’t worry, Colton fixed it. Thanks Colton!!!

It is safe to say that we come back to the hotel very sweaty and dirty, but we wouldn’t want to have it any other way! All of the men and women we have been working with are so fun and so hard working. They help keep us motivated throughout the day! The kids on the campus get a couple recesses per day so it is awesome when they get to come out of class and we all stop and play games with them. We are looking forward to working with SC for the next couple of days to help them in anyway we can.