Cambodia: Max Meier builds new boarding school for girls in Pailin

Letter from Marist Brother Max Meier:

Our future study home for girls has a very clear direction. After the completion of the building for boys, we now want to give girls from the surrounding small villages and settlements the opportunity to complete the last three years of high school. But before they can go there, we want to give them a decent school education. The connections are poor. There is no public transport and certainly no school bus service. The families, with their “hand-to-mouth” mentality, produce the bare necessities of life, which means eating rice three times a day. They are not able to provide their children with further education. So there are many reasons to carry out our project and help young people to have a better life.

Current letter from Marist Brother Max Meier (January 19, 2021):

Now it is finally finished, the construction. The construction company is still working on the last details. We were also able to pay the company on time, thanks to generous donations from home. The remaining $5,600 US, due in 6 months, has also been reserved, thanks to our Australian Marist friends. So if Covid-19 is controlled to some extent, we will be able to receive the first students and volunteers for the next school year. When I look out the window, I still can’t quite believe that this building has grown up before our eyes in half a year. So we have made very good use of the Corona year. Our new task will also change the structure of the parish. The brothers now all live in the new house and the parish has had a permanent priest for a year who now wants to take care of it. We brothers have been working there for more than 10 years.

We will continue to take care of the tutoring, english and computer courses there, but our main focus is the new study home, which we want to slowly ramp up. It will start a new stage of the Marists in Pailin, so to say Pailin 1.2.

Thanks to Covid-19, we also have a novice (Khmer) among us who will have to complete his first year virtually. For us it is good because we have at least one boy in the community and that is a gift!

Well dear friends, once again “Vergelt’s Gott” and heartfelt thanks and I hope for my next home leave to be able to visit you, even if probably behind the mask.

Saludos and greetings to the team and all the donors!!!

Br. Max, Br. Francis Peter Amoako Attah and Br. Pierre Joseph Rasolomana