Homestay Volunteer Teacher Organization

HVTO is a non-profit community based NGO founded by the group of volunteers chaired by Sim Piseth, the English Teacher and professional tour guide in Cambodia in 2008. This organization develops and manages projects directed towards helping the poor Cambodian communities. Its fundamental goal is empowering people and creating the conditions necessary for sustainable development through education.

Fundamentally our HVTO program is a supplement to the public-school education of rural Cambodians with the English and computer skills they need to be successful in today’s world. Since 2008 HVTO has sponsored 493 students, mostly through visiting tourists. Thus far 98 have received university degrees, working throughout Cambodia. Professions vary from teaching and tourism, to medical, finance, science, and engineering. Few could have been as successful without the financial and moral support of our HVTO sponsors. With the completion of a second school in 2024 we have more than doubled our enrollment to1,100 students. These are educated using only eleven full-time teaching staff because we have a pool of 109 student teachers. This keeps our overhead exceedingly low. Taken from grades 11-12 and university students, and as part of their sponsorship agreement, each of these student
teachers volunteer one 8-hour shift per month. The high-schoolers take the beginning classes and the university students more advanced English classes. They confirm that ‘As you teach so you learn.’

The primary sources of income for HVTO are corporate contributions from the large tour companies VIKING and STUDIOSUS Foundation e.V, and most importantly from the generosity of their guests. Others assist us, but most prominent among these, especially in our community service role, is A Drop of Life (ADOL), with whom we have been active since 2016. A Hong Kong-based NGO which is focused on bringing clean water to poor rural Asian communities, ADOL has also helped with educational facilities, but their main effort has been in greatly accelerating our non-educational projects, including water wells and filters, toilets, food aid, and modest homes for the ultra-poor.

Living all over the world, with the aid of modern technology, former guests not only help financially, but also provide administrative assistance. HVTO has representatives in Hong Kong, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, and throughout the USA. Here, our partner organization is HTVO (Homestay Teachers Volunteer Organization) USA, a 501c3 (charitable) organization providing tax relief to supporters of HVTO in Cambodia. At the local level, HVTO works in close cooperation with provincial authorities. Seeing the benefits that we bring to the community, as well as to the country as a whole, they are very supportive in our work. Our success, of course, begins with the students themselves, who do all of the work, but none of this would be possible without the enormous support that we receive from parents, village committees, and the local and regional authorities. Please peruse other sections of this website in order more fully understand the details of our projects. Our 2024 Newsletter is an excellent place to start. There you will see the direct human connection that can be maintained as sponsors watch their students progress academically, and as they become functioning, well-educated adults. The speed at which they are helping to propel Cambodia into the ranks of developed countries is truly inspiring.