Sudbury woman continues to operate school in Cambodia despite pandemic challenges

A woman originally from Greater Sudbury who opened a school in Cambodia says running that school during the pandemic has been a challenge, but things are slowly starting to return to normal.

In 2009, Capreol's Tammy Durand opened a school in Cambodia called ABCs and Rice. It's a not-for-profit school that provides free education and reverse tuition, as the students are paid in rice for going to school.

Durand says the tough times for the school started as soon as the pandemic did in March 2020.

"Basically, all of our volunteers and we had some student exchange program student, they all got pulled back to their home countries, and it was just sort of overnight we lost everybody," she said. 

"A couple of weeks later, the government announced that all schools had to close."

Durand says that meant her students not only lost access to education, but to the rice and other food and water they received at school. She said she came up with a plan to try and address that.

"We just went out and we cooked breakfast and lunch and we just bagged up all these breakfasts and lunches and started handing them out," she said.

"We did that for a couple of days and just slowly made a plan."

That plan meant the school shifting into becoming a food distribution centre, as well as distributing education about proper hand washing and masking. 

Durand says funding for the school changed as well, with some of usual donors being tight on money without work during the pandemic and some of the regular fundraising events getting cancelled. 

"I usually go to Canada once a year and do a big fundraising campaign for about a month, and of course, that died," she said. 

"I normally go to Australia and do some speaking engagements and some fundraising, and that really bottomed out. So our bills haven't gone down, even though our services have been lowered."

She said other groups have stepped up and she's hoping to return to Canada this year to visit family and fundraise

Durand says the school recently re-opened and things are slowly returning to normal.