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From the 14th to the 18th of July 2017, Fr. Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, visited Cambodia for the first time.  He was accompanied by his Assistant for the Asia Pacific region, Fr. Danny Huang, who knows the situation here well.   During a meal in Siem Reap, Fr. Sosa suggested to the Mission Leadership that our education project could learn from the “Fe y Alegria” education movement in Latin America and Africa.  After his conference to all the partners on the Jesuit Mission in Cambodia on the following day, he clarified this point. He underlined that the strength of this popular education movement is the international network linking all the schools together.  In this way a small group of Jesuits and others can create a movement involving many local schools all following Ignatian pedagogy. It allows for a deep training of teachers as these schools have a common approach to education.  Some members responded to Fr. Sosa by saying that the Buddhist context in Cambodia would not allow the development of such a faith-based movement. Fr. Sosa explained that the movement is not a confessional but a pedagogical one.   Fr. Dani Villanueva, the Director of the Spanish NGO “Entre Culturas” which works with the “Fe y Alegria” education movement, happened to be visiting Cambodia at the same time.  He suggests that the education projects of the Battambang Prefecture and Jesuit Service Cambodia could already be a latent network to start such a movement if the Xavier Jesuit School project became the catalyst.  So it seems that the vision for our Teacher Resource Centre could be expanded to include both the request from the Minister to help the Teacher Training Colleges of Banteay Meanchey and Battambang provinces and the insight that the creation of a new pedagogical movement and network across the North-western provinces in Cambodia may be a real possibility.   More thought and reflection needed!

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