The reign of the Khmer Rouge devastated the education system in Cambodia and destroyed it's foundation. Since then, the Cambodian government has invested a lot of time and money into rebuilding their education system. However, change is slow and Cambodia still has one of the poorest literacy rates in Asia, especially amongst women. High dropout rates, lack of qualified teachers and classroom overcrowding are all significant factors that continue to have a negative impact on the countries education system.

Cambodia’s economy is shifting from traditional farming to an economy driven by industry and service. This economic change has increased social inequality within the country as the less educated and economically poorer people are driven into low-paid jobs with no career development.

The demand for skilled labour, in the growing tourism industry, calls for a greater need for children to get more engaged in their education, in particular with developing English language proficiency.

The Hope Agency school was established in 2010 with the aim of providing accessible education and English development to children in the surrounding villages.

In this rural area children are prepared to travel 7km each way daily for a one hour English lesson. The school usually has over 250 children attending each day. For many of the children from the rural villages, learning English is seen as the only way to get on in life and achieve the better jobs in Cambodia such as accounting and hotel work to bring an overall higher standard of living for themselves.