khmerhit
Joined: 31 May 2003
Posts: 1874
Location: Reverse Culture Shock Unit
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 Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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There are a couple places in Cambodia where computers have been installed in orphanages, and it goes without saying that the pupils learn English. i knew BK briefly--not v popular with some people, but I liked him...
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Bernard Krisher: Healing the Killing Fields
A former in-your-face journalist saw Cambodia up close before the Khmer Rouge marched in. He's hoping the Internet will help the country's people grasp the future and leave the dark past behind
by GINA CHON
Here are five philanthropists helping to bridge the digital divide (cover story)
t h e h e r o e s
� M.S. Swaminathan
A prize-winning scientist puts theory into practice
� Lin Mui Kiang
A head-start in rural Malaysia for the next generation
� Roger Harris
The Internet as the new jungle telegraph
� Bernard Krisher Telemedicine turns Cambodia into the healing fields
� Iqbal Quadir
A Bangladesh mobile venture does well by doing good
Bernard Krisher is a small man, around five feet tall. His wizened face, dominated by a large pair of glasses, reveals all of his 69 years and reminds you of Yoda from Star Wars. Unlike the calm, grandfatherly Jedi master, however, Krisher is a hyperactive bundle of energy and ideas. The journalist-turned-philanthropist is constantly in motion, whether meeting up with contacts around the world, overseeing a shipment of computers or sending e-mail at four in the morning � and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of his goals. Krisher freely admits that his in-your-face intensity does not endear him to everyone. But that is precisely the quality that has allowed him to bring the Internet to a corner of the world better known for genocidal thugs than cutting-edge technology.
The village of Robib, in the northern Cambodian province of Preah Vihear, is the petri dish for Krisher's experiment in bridging the digital divide. This remote hamlet was inaccessible to outsiders until two years ago. The nearest hospital is a two-hour drive away on a good day, and it takes six hours to reach Phnom Penh. Piped water, electricity and telephones are unavailable to the inhabitants, whose annual per-capita income is about $37. The village clinic has a stethoscope, a blood-pressure cuff and a small refrigerator to store vaccinations � when they are available.
But Robib has Internet access, thanks to Krisher's two nonprofit organizations, American Assistance for Cambodia and Japan Relief for Cambodia. With donations solicited by Krisher and matching funds from the World Bank, the two groups have been building Internet-linked rural schools in which Cambodian children learn how to connect to the rest of the world through e-mail and the Web. Robib's Wakako Hironaka School � named after the donor, a Japanese parliamentarian � was the first fruit of Krisher's project. The computers there are powered by solar panels and generators; a satellite dish donated by Shin Satellite of Thailand provides the Internet link.
Besides teaching children to be wired, the computers have brought world-class health care to the village through a telemedicine project that links Robib with Phnom Penh's Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope, which Krisher helped establish, and Partners Telemedicine, a Boston-based firm staffed by doctors from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. The villagers are also able to participate in e-commerce: Robib has set up its own website, www.villageleap.com, through which it sells handcrafted silk products to overseas buyers. The venture has so far raised more than $6,000, and the money is to be used to set up a pig farm. "The Internet is helping develop a whole village in a remote area of Cambodia," says Krisher. "This is the answer to (Microsoft founder) Bill Gates's question of how a computer can benefit someone earning a dollar a day."
The relationship between Cambodia and the man dubbed a "one-man United Nations" goes back to the 1960s, when Krisher covered the country as a Newsweek correspondent. "In the 1960s, Phnom Penh was beautiful, like a small Paris," he recalls. "Then the Khmer Rouge came in and everything fell apart." After retiring from journalism, Krisher threw himself into rebuilding the country. He started by bringing in material aid like canned food and shoes. Then he launched the English-language Cambodia Daily and established Phnom Penh's Future Light Orphanage, where the children were taught the Internet, before turning his attention to Robib.
Krisher's numerous contacts from his correspondent days � whom he regularly hits up for donations � and his stubborn tenacity have been crucial to the success of his projects. "A lot of times I think his ideas are crazy," says his personal assistant Nuon So Thero. "But somehow they work because he pushes very hard and knows a lot of people who make it come together."
Not everyone is a believer. Krisher's determination to get his way has earned him the nickname of "Bernie Pusher," and some question whether Krisher's high-tech approach is really appropriate for a country that still lacks basic services. "He has the ability to get people to commit resources to his project," says Bill Herod of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, which coordinates the activities of 60 local and foreign nongovernmental organizations. "The question is whether those resources are appropriate for Cambodia."
Still, Krisher's single-minded dedication to his cause has earned him much praise. Just ask Robib resident Thoung Pou. A few months ago, as part of the telemedicine project, 30 patients from the village sent their medical information and digital photos to Phnom Penh and Boston over the Internet. The doctors immediately diagnosed Thoung Pou's 10-month-old daughter with a life-threatening case of tuberculosis and arranged for the child to be sent to the Kompong Thom provincial hospital, which is a partner in the telemedicine project. "I don't know what the Internet is," says her mother. "I just know my situation would have been hopeless (without the project)."
Krisher himself has no doubts about the benefits his ventures have brought. "Before the kids in my orphanage knew how to use the Internet, their fate would have been being prostitutes or cyclo drivers," he says. "Now they want to be computer teachers." And that is surely Krisher's crowning achievement: the restoration of hope.
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http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:SpRc2tk_d68J:www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/technology/article/0,8707,132691,00.html+orphanage+cambodia+computer+krisher&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=1
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Tokyo-based Bernie Krisher's grand plan
Rural Cambodian orphans given computers, Internet access
Two hundred fifty children at a rural Cambodia orphanage, many left after their parents perished in Pol Pot's "Killing Fields," are leap-frogging to computer literacy, Internet access to their international peers and face a brighter future as a computer-learning center opened yesterday. The location of the new center has no water, electricity or telephones.
The orphans never heard of a computer until a few months ago, according to Bernie Krisher, a Tokyo-based journalist who has taken the plight of Cambodians to heart and created a number of projects to bring surcease to the embattled country. He is founder and chairman of American Assistance for Cambodia and Japan Relief for Cambodia, both non-profit, charitable organizations funded by donors.
"With minimal funding, but donations of equipment by manufacturers, the project aims to prove that if you provide any child anywhere and under any environment a computer and mouse, that child is likely to master the mysteries in weeks. In this way, these children can be transformed as if by magic from an analog to a digital creature, narrowing the gap between the 'have' and 'have-not' computer-literate generation," Krisher said.
"Such a gap, if allowed to grow, portends to seriously affect future Third World development and world stability."
Two months ago a shipment of donated computers, scanners and printers began to arrive at the Future Light Orphanage in a rural village 15 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. This orphanage provides a home to children whose parents were killed or physically maimed by the Khmer Rouge during the era of the "Killing Fields" that wiped out nearly two million Cambodians, about a quarter of the nation's population.
Director of this orphanage is Mrs. Nuon Phaly who ran a counseling center for depressed women at Site Two Camp, a refugee center on the Thai-Cambodian border during the Khmer Rouge holocaust. Mrs. Nuon then began to care for the children of traumatized women who couldn't care for them and adopted other orphans. After Cambodia was liberated and the refugees gradually returned home, she acquired land in Prey Lovear Village (Chom, Chao district) outside Phnom Penh and moved the children there.
A foster-parent plan, which provides US$15 a month per child, enabled her to take in 243 youngsters. Last year, for her outstanding community work, she became the first Cambodian to be awarded the coveted Magsaysay Prize, Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The orphanage already provides training in English, dance, music and sewing skills. By adding computer training and Internet access, the program allows the children to leap ahead of most youngsters in Cambodia and the region. The project is aimed not only at opening up a brighter future to these children whose lives would have been fated to menial work or poverty, but also to encourage other schools in Cambodia to emulate such training while setting a prototype center which can readily be emulated in other developing countries.
The low-cost project relied predominately on donated equipment by manufacturers and the public in Japan and America. These include a generator from Komatsu, computers from Apple-Japan, the MIT Media Laboratory, Nortel, Nichimen and readers of MacPower magazine; accessories from Omron & Hewlett Packard, air conditioners from Matsushita, free shipping by NYK, servicing by JMK in Phnom Penh, a microwave phone system provided by the PPT of Cambodia and construction of a computer classroom funded by Bishiken members (Japan).
As the next step, Krisher was to have announced at the opening on Jan. 14 that a minimum of 100 more computers are now available to be shipped to any remote, rural school or orphanage in Cambodia able to establish a similar program.
A Home Page providing information about the orphanage and the computer-learning program was expected to be on-line by the date of the opening. The site is www.camnet.com.kh/future.light
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Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of the MIT Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., was guest of honor at the opening ceremony of the Computer Learning Center of the Future Light Orphanage. He delivered a significant address to the assembled orphans, administrators of the school and other Cambodian and foreign officials.
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