Aogaah Foundation: Where Education Begins When Everything Else Falls Away

Ian Miller
7 hours ago
6 min read

I’ve spent enough time around education projects to recognise the warning signs early: the branding-first mission statements, the inflated promises, the uncomfortable gap between what’s photographed and what’s actually delivered.

Aogaah Foundation School, in Phnom Penh, isn’t that.

It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t perform urgency. It just opens its doors, every weekday, on a narrow stretch of Railway Road in Toul Kork — and teaches the children who turn up.

That alone puts it at odds with the world around it.

Where “Free Education” Isn’t Free

Cambodia officially provides free public education. Anyone who has lived here, or worked close to low-income communities, knows how incomplete that claim is.

Uniforms cost money. Books cost money. Transport costs money. And for families living day to day — recycling, casual labour, informal selling — a child in school is a child not earning.

The result is not dramatic exclusion. It’s quieter than that. Children drift out of the system, or never enter it at all. Education becomes conditional on stability, and stability is the one thing many families don’t have.

Aogaah Foundation exists precisely in that space — where the system thins out and looks away.

What “Aogaah” Actually Means

“Aogaah” roughly translates to opportunity. Not rescue. Not transformation. Just opportunity — offered without guarantees.

The school provides free, non-formal, government-recognised education to children from underprivileged communities in Phnom Penh. No tuition. No supplies to buy. No hidden costs.

For some students, it’s a bridge back into public school.For others, it’s the only schooling they will ever receive.

Aogaah doesn’t pretend those outcomes are equal. It insists they are both worth the effort.

The Work It Actually Does

Inside the classrooms, there’s nothing ornamental. Desks, blackboards, hand-drawn charts. Everything is there because it’s needed.

The focus is basic, and deliberately so:

Khmer reading and writing
Mathematics
Classroom routine and discipline

This is not remedial education. It’s foundational. For children who have never held a pencil, learning to read their own language is not a stepping stone — it’s a threshold.

Local Cambodian teachers — the only paid staff — are the spine of the school. Volunteers support, but they don’t replace. That matters. It keeps the school accountable to the community it serves, not to outside narratives.

Why English Is Taught — Carefully

In Phnom Penh, English is not a nice-to-have. It’s an access code.

Jobs in NGOs, hospitality, tourism, international business — all of them quietly require it. Without English, whole sectors of the economy are effectively sealed off before children are old enough to understand why.

Aogaah’s English-learning partnership is a response to that reality, not an imported ideal.

Volunteer teachers work alongside local staff to teach:

Basic spoken English
Simple reading and vocabulary
Confidence and listening skills

There’s no obsession with grammar. No promises of fluency. The aim is familiarity — to make English feel usable rather than alien.

Importantly, the English program:

Is free
Has no religious or ideological agenda
Supports, rather than replaces, Khmer education

For older students especially, English becomes something else: leverage. Not escape — but leverage.

The Children Who Come — and Go

Aogaah serves children who are easy to miss:

Kids from informal housing
Children of migrant workers
Students who dropped out early
Children who never enrolled anywhere else

Girls attend in equal numbers — a deliberate choice in communities where domestic labour often pulls them away first.

Some students stay for years. Others disappear — pulled into work, family crises, or relocation. This isn’t framed as failure. It’s acknowledged as reality.

Education here is not linear. It’s episodic. Aogaah’s role is to be there when children can return.

How the School Survives

Aogaah Foundation runs entirely on donations.

There are no paid administrators. No fundraising staff. No executive salaries. Volunteers handle the invisible work — budgets, logistics, maintenance, communication — so that money goes where it matters:

Teacher salaries
School supplies
Basic operations

The budget is modest. Almost uncomfortably so. But it works because the project refuses to inflate itself.

This isn’t scalability culture. It’s sustainability culture.

What It Doesn’t Claim

Aogaah does not claim to end poverty. It doesn’t publish miracle statistics. It doesn’t promise outcomes it can’t control.

What it offers instead is something more honest:

Literacy
Routine
Time

Time for children to develop skills before work hardens into destiny. Time to imagine a future that isn’t entirely dictated by circumstance.

Some students transition into formal education. Some find work where English matters. Some simply carry the knowledge with them — quietly — into adulthood.

That still counts.

Why This Matters More Than It Looks Like

In Phnom Penh, inequality is visible everywhere: luxury apartments rising beside tin-roofed settlements, private schools advertising international futures a few streets away from children who can’t afford notebooks.

Aogaah doesn’t compete with that world. It interrupts it.

It challenges the idea that education must be earned through stability, or that only “high-impact” projects deserve attention. It insists — stubbornly — that showing up, consistently, is impact enough.

The Quiet Radicalism of Staying Open

There’s nothing glamorous about a free school in a poor neighbourhood. No headlines. No awards. Just repetition.

Doors opening. Teachers arriving. Children learning words they were never supposed to know.

Aogaah Foundation isn’t loud. It doesn’t posture. It doesn’t sell transformation.

It just refuses to close.

And in a system that quietly excludes the poorest first, that refusal is more radical than it looks.

🧑‍🏫 About the Founder — Rickard “Rick” Meyer

Rickard “Rick” Meyer is the founder and driving force behind Aogaah Foundation School in Phnom Penh, Cambodia — a grassroots education project with a remarkably simple mission: to give children from economically disadvantaged families access to free, meaningful schooling.

Originally a retired mathematics professor from Arizona, USA, Rick is known affectionately around the school as “Teacher Rick” — a title earned not through formality, but through years of hands‑on teaching, community engagement, and personal commitment to the children he serves.

Rick’s journey into community education began not as a career pivot driven by funding or strategy sessions, but through deep personal engagement with families and students in Phnom Penh’s squatter communities. He didn’t build a campus or chase high‑level partnerships — he started by showing up, teaching basic literacy and numeracy, and inviting children into a space where learning was free and unconditional.

🍭 American Licorice Company — A Global Partner with a Local Impact

American Licorice Company is a family‑owned American confectionery manufacturer best known for beloved brands like Red Vines® and Sour Punch®. Founded in 1914 in La Porte, Indiana, the company has built a century‑long reputation for quality candy — and for supporting meaningful community initiatives that align with its purpose of spreading happiness and opportunity.

Although candy may seem worlds away from classrooms in Phnom Penh, American Licorice Company extends its mission beyond confectionery by contributing to education and youth development in underserved communities overseas — including annual support to the Aogaah Foundation. Through this sponsorship, the company helps fund free education for children who might otherwise be excluded from school because of economic barriers.

The partnership reflects a broader philosophy of social responsibility at American Licorice Company: the belief that business benefits from engaging and investing in communities, both where its associates live and around the world. In Cambodia, this support helps Aogaah maintain free classes, supplies, and learning opportunities — including its growing English learning program — giving children in Phnom Penh a tangible chance for a brighter future.

American Licorice’s sponsorship of Aogaah sits alongside its work with other nonprofit partners, demonstrating a consistent commitment to education, community well‑being, and shared opportunity through financial giving and, in many cases, volunteer support.

🦷 Smiles and Care: The KIDS Dental Mission at Aogaah

In early 2026, Kids International Dental Services (KIDS) — a U.S.‑based nonprofit dedicated to providing pro‑bono dental care for children in developing countries — paid a special visit to Aogaah Foundation’s Village 15 & 16 School in Phnom Penh.

During this KIDS Dental Mission, international volunteer dental professionals brought free dental check‑ups and care directly to Aogaah’s students, delivering services to over 120 children throughout the day.

For many of these children — attending a school that champions access to basic education regardless of family income — this visit was more than a routine check‑up. It was an opportunity to learn about oral health by professionals, to have discomfort addressed, and to connect healthy habits to school performance and confidence.

KIDS’ mission is grounded in the belief that pain‑free, healthy children are better equipped to learn and participate in school life — a philosophy that aligned naturally with Aogaah’s focus on empowerment through education.

What makes this partnership special isn’t just the care delivered that day, but the way it reminds students that health and learning go hand in hand — and that a bright smile can be a powerful source of confidence for a child navigating both school and life. 🌈🪥✨

Author’s Note

I have no institutional role at Aogaah Foundation and no financial stake in the project. My connection is simple: I’ve spent time around the school, spoken with those involved, and seen its work up close.

I’m wary of education stories that oversell transformation or turn poverty into a backdrop for inspiration. This piece is an attempt to describe Aogaah as it actually is — limited, grounded, and quietly effective — without smoothing over the realities it operates within.

If there’s a bias here, it’s toward consistency over spectacle, and toward projects that do the unglamorous work of staying open.