Suffolk University Partnership

Beginning in autumn 2017, we gave educational support to a team of Suffolk professors and students who were heading to Cambodia for service learning in Cambodia with Habitat for Humanity. This lead to creating a partnership with Suffolk University that involves a Suffolk team visiting our school and village while in Cambodia every January to build a Cambodian home via Habitat for Humanity.

In both January 2019 and 2020, Suffolk University in Boston sent ten undergraduate and graduate students, along with two administrators to our school. This service-learning program is run in partnership with administrators from Suffolk’s Center for Community Engagement and faculty from the Political Science and Legal Studies academic department.

This experience has been extremely beneficial to both Suffolk students and to CambCamb. During the January 2020 visit, Suffolk students learned about the educational system in Cambodia, the barriers and challenges students in rural Cambodia face with school, while also helping CambCamb identify its most critical funding priorities, especially given the significant growth the school has experienced over the past four years. In doing so, the Suffolk students learned new global awareness and intercultural skills, as well as skills in program evaluation and philanthropy.

Through the visit, teaching, and playing with the students, the delegation of Suffolk University students and administrators describe the experience of meeting, learning, and serving with the local community and the Cambridge Cambodia School as “world-altering.” The delegation, much like one that visited in 2019, truly felt inspired by the energy and positivity of Cambodian students and teachers at our school.

We are so grateful for this partnership that truly embodies the “educational two-way street” that was the original vision for CambCamb. We love mentoring students here in Boston and making global enrichment education possible for them, while also providing a high tech education for young students in Cambodia.

“I can’t find the words to describe how life changing visiting the Cambridge School in Cambodia was, and will forever be grateful to have had this experience.”

–K.L., sophomore student at Suffolk University, who just changed her major to International Relations after her participation in the program.