It’s finally 2023, and we’ve happily opened our doors for a new school year. While we are basking in the feeling of starting fresh, we can’t help but be proud of the accomplishments we made last year. As we come out of that genuinely extraordinary time, take a look back with us at some of the good ISF has done across 2022.

Education Programme

We are incredibly proud to report that in 2022, our Catch-up Education Programme welcomed 60 new out-of-school children, many of whom had never stepped foot in a classroom before. Our total student count reached 668 in our Catch-up Programme, primary, secondary, higher education and employment, 51% of whom are female.

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that an impressive 93% of our students have passed their exams and will be moving on to the next grade – well above the national average of 72%. Our efforts paid off with 27 students successfully completing their secondary education, often being the first in their families to do so. These tremendous achievements further demonstrate the commitment and hard work of our students and staff in keeping our children learning.

Our mission is to give students a pathway to employment and independent living, and we achieved that in a major way. In 2022, 30 students began university, and 25 students found gainful and fulfilling employment, indicating that children are breaking the cycle of poverty their families have been trapped in. This is a result we are immensely proud of and that would have seemed unimaginable to children who had resigned themselves to a life of scavenging or working in factories.

The consistency of support is essential when the mission requires us to educate children from primary through to university/employment – a ten to fifteen-year journey for a child – and we are forever grateful to all of those who have been part of this journey.

Community Development Projects

In 2022 our Community Projects resumed in full force after two years of pandemic restrictions. Our community and mobile libraries were back in business and we saw a total of 11,232 visits and 8,867 readers, with the number of visits increasing by nearly 10% between July and December, compared to the first half of 2022.

Our Sewing Project also provides economic empowerment to poor communities by giving our students’ family members a chance to learn a new skill and increase their job prospects. In 2022, we empowered 22 trainees in this project, making a lasting, positive impact on their lives. By teaching them transferable sewing and financial literacy skills, they are supported to find new employment opportunities, empowering themselves and improving the finances of their household.

To further support our students’ development, we provided 6320 monthly food parcels to each student’s family. Monthly food parcels help promote good school attendance by providing families with a consistent food supply, so that children are not pulled out of school to help put food on the table. This encourages parents to prioritise their children’s education over other obligations or financial pressures, and discourages absenteeism.

Football Programme

After a hiatus due to the global pandemic, ISF was able to resume its football training and events, engaging more than 4,200 children and youth of all abilities across Cambodia. We organised the country’s largest grassroots football league with games taking place across five provinces and staged multiple tournaments with four all-abilities events and a football festival in Ratanakiri, one of the poorest and most remote provinces.

Our Football Programme is about more than just the game – we use it to address critical issues like gender equality and substance abuse to promote positive behaviour both on and off the pitch. We also continue to provide a rare opportunity for players with disabilities or HIV-positive status to take part in the sport.

Our football-for-good model and social impact curriculum can be adapted to suit almost any context. Every year, ISF’s coaches demonstrate the initiative’s scalability by training 200 coaches and aspiring coaches from rural provinces across Cambodia to deliver social impact lessons and we estimate that this will in turn impact 1500 young players in their own communities.

With our Football Programme now in 13 provinces, we look forward to continuing to use the power of sport to educate, motivate, and empower many more Cambodian youth in the years to come.