On August 16th we had our Community Service activity and built a house for Mrs. Thonh and her family in Bontey Srey District which is around 50 kilometers from the Siem Reap town.
We invited all CRST members to join and also new students. They really enjoyed the CS activities. We can make it happy and finish the house building around 5 pm.
We ask some of our students to got up early on Sunday morning to cook breakfast, and we had 14 students to help us. We started cooking breakfast from 4:10 am and we finished cooking at 6:00 am. At the time of 6:30 am, we left our office to Bontey Srey to build the house. We take three big Tuk Tuks to take our students to build the house, and we arrive around 8:00 am. We had breakfast together at the place that we built, and after that, we had a short meeting with our students to introduce about family’s background, to separate the team and also tell them to follow the team leaders. Then everyone started working at 8:40 am as we planned. For our students' friends that join our CS, we let them join with our students any activities that they like.
The house building, after we introduced the family background and separate the team, everyone started doing their jobs. On that day, we had more than 80 participants, such as all of our high school students, some of Phnom Penh students, some of our university students, and some of our students' friends. For the cook team, they really work hard as they come late because Tuk Tuk problem, but they spend only 2 hours to cook 4 dishes for lunchtime and they did it on the perfect timing. Before break time, we finished some work such as the setting, main structure left side, the main structure in the center, main structure right side, wall frame backside, and front side, wall frame left and right side. We were working until 12:15 pm, then everyone breaks the time to have lunch together in two tents. They really enjoy their lunch as we have delicious food. After had lunch, they take their time to take a nap or relax.
We started our afternoon work at 1:30 pm. In the afternoon, we continue to work such as some parts of the roof and floor. While doing the roof we also do the floor and after finished that two-part we started to do the wall frame and stairs. After that, we were preparing our materials to put them in one place. Then we asked everyone to have a meeting in order to thank them for their working hard, and also invited the owner of the house to express her feelings after we finished the house for them.
The most special thing about this house, is that it was sponsored by our Senior Graduate Students!!! Thank you to Nak, Sompeas, Rany, Samach, Doeb, Veun, Yeat and Pheak. They show us how they love their community and leave their footprint for everyone. This really inspires our students to keep going. After that, we asked our students to showed how they feel today as we built the house for her and we had group photos, and then we came back home safe and sound.