September 23, 2012 4:04 am •
For a poor child in a small Cambodian village, learning to speak English can be a ticket out of poverty, says Spearfish native and recently-returned Peace Corps volunteer Billy McDonald.
McDonald spent the last two years teaching English in one such village, where he renovated a school library — and received about 1,000 donated English-language children's books from his alma mater — that could help put some of those kids on a path to a better life.
"That could change a lot of lives in the village that I lived in," the 27-year-old McDonald said of the Mount Marty College book drive. "To learn English in a developing country like Cambodia ... it's so important, financially and in other ways."
The Yankton college, where McDonald played baseball and earned degrees in history and education in 2008, helped him fill empty library shelves at the Cambodian public school where he taught English to seventh- through 12th-graders from 2010 to 2012.
"We called this the “Books for Billy” campaign," said Mount Marty education professor Nicholas Shudak. "It took on a life of its own."
The library improvement was a "secondary" Peace Corps project for McDonald. "When I showed up, there was somewhat of a library, but there were no English books — and only a few Khmer books on two shelves," he said.
For a big school — about 1,500 students came from many surrounding villages to attend grades 7-12 — its library was in dismal shape, he said. So bad, in fact, that few students even used it.
"There isn't really a culture of reading (for pleasure) in Cambodia," McDonald said, and this school library, with its peeling paint, lack of chairs and tables and no decent books to speak of, did nothing to encourage one.
McDonald applied for and won a $1,200 Peace Corps grant to update the library. That paid for new paint, chairs, tables, wall maps and $600 worth of new Khmer-language books — a mix of fiction and nonfiction — that he bought in the capital of Phnom Penh. When some of his friends at Mount Marty learned about the library project back in 2010, they spearheaded a book drive that resulted in boxes and boxes of easy-to-read English-language children's literature being shipped to the village.
With the help of student Education Club officers Zach Walsh and Sarah Crosgrove, the Books for Billie drive sent at least 1,000 books to Cambodia, a few boxes at a time.
"We shipped them to Billy every two or three months, as the only mode of transportation for the books was to put them on a bicycle or motorbike," Shadduck said. Each shipment cost about $150.
"We were very pleased by the response from the community (many school children) in terms of book donations but also in terms of the willingness of a few community members to write checks to fund the shipping costs," Shudak said.
Where McDonald taught, public schoolchildren get only about 2 hours of instruction per week in the English language, beginning in the seventh grade. That's not enough, McDonald said, so the additional English-language library books provide some extra exposure to the language.
"It gives students who really, really want to try to learn English an avenue to do that," McDonald said of the donated books.
Even elementary-level storybooks were beyond the fluency of most of his secondary students, so having the books available to younger grade levels in the coming years will be important, he said. Students often pointed to pictures in the books and asked for translations.
"English will only be more important as the years go on, so they will benefit students for years to come," he said. "The effort put into that book drive was greatly appreciated by Cambodians and by the kids at my school."
So is the renovated library. "It looks clean and nice; new tables, new shelves and a Cambodia map painted on the wall," he said.
After the library had actual books on its shelves, McDonald had to educate the school librarian in how to manage a lending library. The hardest part was teaching librarians and students about borrowing and book security and organization, although he opted for broad subject categories instead of the Dewey decimal system.
"Using a library was not part of their culture, either," he said.
Now, more students are using the library, and its improved selection of books in the Khmer language.
"Every day, they read the story books. The fiction books, they really got used; they love their stories," he said. "This sort of bridged a gap of getting them used to reading more in their own language and, maybe, in the future encouraging them to read in another language like English or French," McDonald said.
The 2004 Spearfish High School graduate wasn't the only Peace Corps volunteer from his hometown serving in Cambodia. His high school buddy, Aaron Merchen, also was stationed in a village about 3 hours away, McDonald said, and the two saw each other regularly.
"It broadened my horizons," McDonald said of his two years in Cambodia. Before joining the Peace Corps, he taught school in the Elk Point/Jefferson School District. "I wanted to travel and see the world ... and it definitely got me doing that."
Shudak said McDonald exemplifies Mount Marty's service mission. "Billy is an amazing individual who is genuinely concerned with helping others," he said. "We learned a few things from this: that such simple efforts really do make a large impact around the world; that perhaps we should be doing this more often; and, that people are generally ready and willing to help with such projects especially if they know the money and the resources are making a tangible impact."
McDonald separated from the Peace Corps six weeks ago, and he's visiting his parents, William and Peggy McDonald, at their home in Spearfish. He plans to return next week to Cambodia, though, where he'll go to work for the non-governmental organization Partners for Development, which works to improve health and social issues in Cambodia.
He dislikes the humidity and heat of Cambodia — where the weather is "very difficult to adjust to. It's so humid and hot, you don't ever stop sweating, ever." But he misses the Cambodian people. "I know it's cliche, but the people — I consider some of them like family. Cambodian people are very welcoming, very curious people. Cambodians in particular are awfully curious."
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