December is the enrollment month for public schools in Cambodia. In Neak Loeung and Poipet, Damnok Toek collaborated with local authorities and public schools to initiate official enrollment campaigns encouraging provincial children to enrol for the 2023 school year. The annual nationwide campaigns intend to raise awareness among both children and their parents about the enrolment period and the importance of education as well as to encourage the communities to bring out-of-school children to school.

The collaboration between local authorities, public institutions, and NGOs is important in countries like Cambodia where the national capacity to provide services to rural and vulnerable populations remains limited. In the case of education, for example, DT social workers regularly visit local communities to promote awareness about the importance of education, identify out-of-school children (OOSC) and determine why they are out of school. The top priority is enrolling these children in public schools to boost the capacity of and community trust in the public school system. Authorities and schools rely on collaboration with NGO networks during enrollment campaigns to ensure the largest number of at-risk or OOSC are being registered. 

To ensure that there are no children left behind when the official enrollment period is over, NGOs are allowed to identify children who remain unregistered. These children become the focus of future education outreach efforts as social workers determine the reason they did not register and if they could benefit from DT support, such as the Non-Formal Education program, which supports children in their education with the goal of reintegrating them into the public school system.

On December 9th, 21 public schools and local authorities joined the enrollment campaign in Neak Loeung and registered 1,470 students (736 girls) for the upcoming school year.

Two weeks later on December 27th, four public schools and local authorities in Poipet joined DT’s efforts and enrolled 616 students (317 girls) for the 2023 school year.