Cambodia, how I met Mr. SkoreksteemCreated with Sketch.

in #school7 years ago (edited)

After 4 months of hiking in the mountains of Himalaya we felt ready to take our next step and move on to Cambodia.

We have a friend from Sweden living here in the city Kampot, his name is Isak. We talked to him many times while we was India and he told us about this virgin country which had gone through a terrible genocide almost forty years ago and how big parts of the country is still developing out of nothing.

In other words a place perfect for starting businesses and to help the people of Cambodia to build up their new society.

Me and Fredrik moved to our friend in Kampot, but after only one week Fredrik met a girl from Argentina and they quickly fell in love. They traveled to Thailand together for some weeks and after that they decided to move to her home in Brazil where they now live together.

I decided to stay for a while with Isak and all new friends I met. I was discovering the beautiful jungle and many waterfalls on the Bokor Mountain in Kampot with my new friends, and in the night time we were usually hanging out in the bars. We had a great time.

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It was great, but there was one thing that bothered me - I didn’t have any work or anything to do for a living. Isak was studying on distance from a Swedish school so he made his living out of that and most of my friends worked in restaurants or bars in Kampot. But that’s not my kind of work and I couldn’t come up with something I wanted to do. I lost little bit traction.

At this time I decided to go to another place to have some time alone. I found a beautiful beach named Otres not to far away. I stayed there while I was trying to figure out what I want to do in the future.

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Bamboo Shack, where I was staying in my time in Otres

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One day when I was sitting in the restaurant of Bamboo Shack and trading cryptos, a man shows up behind me. I looked at him and he asked me “trading altcoins?”
I said yes. He wishes me good luck then he went away.
I got a mysterious feeling.

Some days later he shows up in the restaurant again. He seemed interesting so I took the table next to him and he introduces himself as Marek. We started talking and he tells me about his life and how it was growing up in Poland under the communism, when he escaped to Germany and how he managed to make his way through life. I was impressed by his stories. He was very clever and could turn the simplest of things into a business.

Then he introduces me to the Steemit community and told me about his idea of building a school funded by the Steemians. I loved the idea and he asked me if I want to be a part of it.
That's how I became the first volunteer of Satoshi School.

I took Marek to one of my friends in Kampot who is running a school project here with volunteers from all over the world. We went out to her school to get some inspiration and share some ideas and then we introduce her to the steemit community. You can find her project at @theredroad.

When we went there all the village people was so happy to see us and all volunteers coming there to help them. As Cambodia can be a really hard place to grow up in and usually the families on the countryside don't have enough money to send their kids to school, so they are very happy to suddenly have this opportunity to get a free education.

This spirit is something we want to share through Satoshi School. We want to give this poor and hard working families a chance to send their kids to school and get a free education so they can help develop their society. Our belief is in the end that the schools will fund them self through steemit and other communities growing up in the crypto world.

Satoshi School will start the project of building a school, then we will teach the volunteers and locals about steemit and how they can use it to show the progress off the school and the children and hopefully, in the end, they will get enough money for arranging school transfers, food, books, computers and other school materials.

Cambodia is a perfect place where it is possible to do this project. I think in more developed countries this idea of a free school system based on cryptos would likely be rejected by the government because it would compete with their system. But on the countryside in Cambodia there is no system so there is no one competing.

This project together with many others can be the first steps to build a new society, were all people comes together.
A society built by the people, for the people.

Let us come together and start a new era of the world, the Crypto era.

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Marek is a great guy, I met him several times in Amsterdam, golden!

Truly.. He gives inspiration

So what skills are actually taught in this Satoshi school and who is teaching the kids?

For now there is no school built yet. The money we collected through @satoshischool will be used to buy land in Kampot, then we will search for volunteers and local workers and try to build the school with only the money from steemit. As an experiment.

I have contact with a real estate firm who will give me a map of m^2 prices, where it is easy to get water and electricity etc. I will post about that later.

My vision for the school, what they are going to learn and how will be posted in near future. This is only for introduction.

So basically this is online fundraiser project and kids will be taught by local volunteers.
And who will own land that you will buy for the school? The people who collect money donations through Steemit or maybe you are planning to transfer rights of ownership to local municipality?

Yes, the school will be run by locals and volunteers from everywhere. @Skorek know a good organization from Germany he will contact.

Foreign people can by law not own more than 49% of the land. So basically the local municipality will own the land but we have contract with them saying that we can build a school there. And if we give them free school they will be very thankful and help us. Same happened for @theredroad.

Welcome to Cambodia!
My wife @mumma-monza and I have lived here for about 6 years now.
If your ever in Siem Reap, get in touch. I own a bar here and would be more than happy to buy you a drink and have a chat.
Following you, interested in seeing how your journey in Cambodia goes!
Good luck!
I'm trying to find out how many people in Cambodia are on steemit. If you have time Please check out my post...https://steemit.com/cambodia/@philippekiene/how-many-steemians-have-we-got-living-in-cambodia

For now there is no school built yet. The money we collected through @satoshischool will be used to buy land in Kampot, then we will search for volunteers and local workers and try to build the school with only the money from steemit. As an experiment.

I have contact with a real estate firm who will give me a map of m^2 prices, where it is easy to get water and electricity etc. I will post about that later.

My vision for the school, what they are going to learn and how will be posted in near future. This is only for introduction.

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