Two of our most important partners came to Phnom Penh to meet the CIST students. Flash back on the unforgettable trip of our ECS & Accenture's friends. 

What impressed us...(from Véronique di Benedetto, Director, and Jacques Sorrel, CEO of ECS Group)

"The first striking impression when discovering CIST is the calm and the serenity you feel, a form of harmony between school and students.

An intuition that is confirmed when meeting teachers, employees and students. I was pleased to take part to the graduation ceremony of all these committed students, smiling, dressed up in their school uniforms.Anyone would be impressed by hearing their professional projects after graduating from CIST, by sharing their ambition to build a better life. Emotion surrounds us.

Strong, when visiting two students’ families, where we received a simple but warm welcome, expressing the dignity of those for whom life is an every-day fight. Even stronger when visiting the dump where live so many poor people. 

CIST, what an amazing project! Congratulations to every one!"

Meeting the Deva... (from Frédérique Hagège-Hubaldi, in charge of the Accenture Foundation)

"After flying over Bangkok, a small Manhattan floating on rice fields, I entered Cambodia by the North through a thin rain coloured like a rainbow. Siam Reap is a small touristy town which shines like the Riviera at dusk. At daylight, Siam Reap is the entry gate of the old Angkor kingdom where the temples rise among an overwhelming and fascinating nature. When entering temples, groups of very young bare-foot kids jump on you, trying to sell bracelets, postcards, fans or the monsoon season best-seller: a plastic raincoat, a kind of flashing yellow or pink garbage bag, fitting all sizes and shapes. 

An old teacher, living memory of Cambodia’s past, introduced us to old traditions, Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, embracing the fights between evils and Devas…and I later realized that this ancestral fight was still going on when reaching Phnom Penh. Fight to eat, fight to drive across, fight to learn, fight to live…In this heavy and wet atmosphere, moving on board of a touk-touk becomes a real pleasure, as you feel a fresh wind on your face. You would then almost forget the thousands of 2, 3 or 4-wheels vehicles that surround you, surging without notice from dirty side streets.

In a dead-end that looks to me cleaner and nicer than the other streets of Phnom Penh stands the white office of the CIST, small heaven and refuge of peace. The bell rings, the canteen opens up, the students come out of the class rooms, laughing and talking like in any other school in the world. But we are not in any other school and this very morning, not so far from here, very young kids make their living by picking up white plastic bags on the dumps of Phnom Penh: weird way of recycling! 

I had known CIST by looking at pictures, reading leaflets describing the core values of its founders but I have discovered the full sense of its mission there in Cambodia: a chaotic history, thousands of teenagers and children left without any references, a bursting energy to be channelled, lives to be uphold from dump to school and from school to employment. 

Should I keep only one memory of Phnom Penh, it would be a smile: the smile of Buddha, the smile of a kid with whom you share a breakfast at the foot of the dump, the smile of our CIST students, so kind but full of so much strength… "