By KATH GANNAWAY
A GROUP of students from Upper Yarra Secondary College will spend the next week in Cambodia as part of a Rotary World of Difference Humanitarian Travel project.
After a year of fund-raising, the students and staff left on Saturday for the 10-day tour which will see them visiting and working with disadvantaged groups, experiencing Cambodia’s culture and learning about the dark history of the country.
Teacher Bronwen Foley said the trip would be both confronting and life-changing for the students and for the Cambodian children and communities they visited.
“Our group will get the opportunity to experience another culture which will be so different to what we experience in the Upper Yarra Valley,” she said.
“When not undertaking humanitarian work, we will have varied experiences from the infamous Khmer Rouge prison, torture centre and the Killing Fields to learning about the animals in slavery, experiencing different meals and using a traditional scythe to harvest a crop.
“Seeing and experiencing village life in a Third World country with no taps, toilets or electricity will be confronting to our students, many of whom would think being without internet access is the end of the world,” she said, but added the experience would build self-awareness, resilience, self-esteem and independence.
The students will give a presentation to Rotary and to Upper Yarra Community Enterprise which through the Warburton and Yarra Junction Bendigo Community Banks has contributed to sponsoring the trip.
“Through their experience with the Cambodian people, students will be able to filter through to students and adults in the Yarra Valley that living with multiculturism is something that we should embrace in our community and not be afraid of,” Ms Foley said.
