Mr. Houl Seourn (man sitting on the right, aged 53, is chief of the Commune Council of Boeung Char Commune in Koh Dambong Cluster, Kratie Province. Beoung Char is an island located in the Mekong River, which stretches out to the border with Stung Treng Province. The people in this commune are spread out over different parts of the island, which is over 20 km long. This complicates communication between the different villages as there are no proper roads on the island and transportation is mainly by boat. Mr. Houl is very actively involved in education issues in his commune as chief of the CEFAC. He shares his experiences about education development in his commune: "I believe that education is very important for the future of our community. Due to the geographical spread of the villages, many of the children live too far away from the three schools on the island. Villagers expressed concern about the limited education opportunities for their children. As CEFAC, we tried to work closely with our community to make it possible of all our children to go to school and therefore we discussed possible solutions together. We agreed to construct several small community schools in those areas too far away from the state schools. Communities collect money to contribute to the salaries of the locally hired community teachers to teach in those schools. However, the problem is that these schools can only function part of the academic year, depending on the available community funds. I remember that I was invited to participate in a cluster school planning workshop in September 2005. This is when I learned about the ESCUP program and how it supports schools in remote areas like ours. I am a Kuoy minority and we have many minorities represented on our island. Therefore we were excited to receive support that responds to our specific needs. We discussed ESCUP's activity menu and I strongly advocated for the appointment of community teachers because of the problems we face with the lack of trained teachers. It was approved to appoint several community teachers for our schools and this has improved the education services tremendously, especially because the teachers come from our own community and understand the children and their situation well. The support from ESCUP facilitated better collaboration between the communities and schools, DOE and POE and strengthened the role of the community in education. Authorities, communities, and teachers now work together to improve education. Together we identify out-of-school children and help them to find ways to go back to school. Children from poor families can go to school because of the scholarship program. The support from ESCUP has really helped my commune and we are proud of the positive changes we made. But there is a lot more to be done to achieve the EFA goals so we hope ESCUP continues to support us in the implementation of our ideas".