Khmer New Year, or “Chaul Chnam Thmey”, is the greatest traditional festival and national holiday in Cambodia. The holiday lasts for three days, this year it starts on April 13th.

The New Year is a time for Cambodians to come together with family members in their homelands to celebrate and spend great times together.  At ISF schools, most of our student’s families come from the provinces and moved to Phnom Penh in search of a better life. Every Khmer New Year we close the school for 10 days (this year from 11 April until 19 April) to enable our students to spend enough time with their relatives back in the provinces and visit their local Buddhist pagoda.

Before Khmer New Year, we teach students about the history and traditions of the new year’s celebrations by telling them the story of Khmer New Year and organising games and traditional ceremonies.  All the students really enjoyed learning and participating in all the games together with their friends, teachers and staff at ISF. At the end of the activities, all the students were excited to give each other their wishes for the Khmer New Year.

One of our Catch-Up students, 12-year-old Sok khea was very happy to get the chance to take part in the festivities, as he had never done this before. Smiling he said: “Today I am so excited to listen to the story about Khmer New Year and very happy to pay all the games. I now understand everything very well and will tell my parents and other children all about Khmer New Year when I get home. At the end, I would like to say a big thank you to all the teachers and staff for organising this, I had so much fun!