Last week I was in Phnom Penh and had a nice chat with Kurt Bredenberg, an expert of education policy in Cambodia and a long time resident in the country. While talking about the school cluster policy the conversation touched upon the Priority Action Program, or PAP. PAP started as a pilot in ten provinces […]
Evidence-based policy: a matter of luck? Read More »
A common feature of community development projects is to set up new self help groups to run community development initiatives. This approach often disregards the existence of groups and associations that have been traditionally active as the story of the pagoda of Botum tells us. The village of Botum Lech is located in the
The self-help tradition in the pagodas of Cambodia Read More »
I am at the entrance of the pagoda of Gangaramaya in Colombo. As in the the pagoda compound everybody is walking barefoot, I take off my shoes and walk towards an old man sitting a table. Old style, black framed glasses. He sits at a table and issues tickets to foreign tourists. ‘100 Rupies, sir’
Arnaldo just published a short article on the role of Buddhist pagodas in dealing with poverty in Cambodia in the development magazine Just Change published in New Zealand. Buddhist aid: Pagodas reducing poverty in Cambodia This article tells the story of the Pagoda Association of Botum, a pagoda that has survived a devastating totalitarian regime
Just published – Buddhist Aid Read More »
We enter the pagoda compound with the car and stop in front of the sala (or dining hall). It is typical Khmer wooden building on stilts. I step out of the car and see Madame Yort Norng standing at the entrance of the sala at the top of the short but steep stairs that lead
20 – 30 km: legs feel heavy and tired The time between mid-June and the end of August has been certainly the hardest. Maybe because of the summer, or because the World Cup kept me awake almost every night till late, or because in the desert landscape eat the University with just two or three
0 – 20 km: start slowly, find your pace. The first step of the writing process has been the preparation of the dissertation outline with number of chapters, an estimated number of pages, and the main references to be used in the different sections. I found this initial step easy since the articles and project
During ten months, from February to November 2006, I have been writing my doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere. Simon Down, a lecturer from the University of Newcastle who gave a presentation in a two day seminar at the University of Vaasa in April 2006, described the PhD as the most intense period of