Pleasant Grove teens wash cars to build computer lab at Cambodian school

Two Pleasant Grove High School students spent the past several months detailing cars in Texarkana driveways and setting aside half of every dollar they made. That money has now paid for every computer in a new lab at a technical school in rural Cambodia, and the lab carries their names.

Daniel Ayers, a senior, and Mason Fry, a junior, started Apex Mobile Detailing last spring. From the start, they committed half of their earnings to a $5,000 goal: computers for JHP Skola, a technical high school in Puok village near Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Job after job, driveway after driveway, they hit it. The boys sent the check just before the school year began. The school ordered the equipment, and the computers were installed about a week ago. A plaque mounted at the school now designates the space as the Daniel Ayers and Mason Fry Computer Lab.

From a Facebook post to a plan

The connection to Cambodia runs through Daniel’s family. His great-uncle lives in Cambodia and works at JHP Skola. When he shared a Facebook post about a friend who had come to volunteer at the school, the boys started wondering whether students there could learn robotics the way they do.

Both are members of Pleasant Grove’s state-ranked robotics team, and the subject runs in Daniel’s family. His mother, Nicole, teaches robotics for Texarkana ISD. Designing, programming and building robots has pushed both boys toward careers in engineering and shown them how much access to technology matters.

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As they asked more questions, they learned the school didn’t have the basic computers a robotics program would need. So the plan changed. Computers had to come first.

They first looked at raising the money through GoFundMe, but international restrictions made that difficult. Instead, they saved half of everything Apex Mobile Detailing brought in until they had $5,000. The donation went directly to the school and covered all of the computers in the lab.

“It was rewarding to send the check off and see how excited the students and faculty were,” Daniel said. “The students may never know who those two guys on the plaque are, but hopefully they know that someone thousands of miles away cared about their futures.”

About JHP Skola

JHP Skola is run by the Cambodian School Project, a nonprofit founded in 2002 with a board based mostly in Madison, Wisconsin. The group has built five elementary schools and one technical school in Siem Reap Province, and its board president lives in Cambodia full time to oversee them.

The technical school opened in 2011. Its name honors Janko and Honza Pfeiffer, two men who quietly mentored scouts in Czechoslovakia under communist rule. Former scouts from the Czech Republic, now grown, funded the building in their memory. “Skola” is Czech for school.

About 40 technical students enroll each year, studying either computers and English or sewing. The organization reports that close to 90% of students who enroll go on to graduate, and that graduates have found work with charities, hotels, a Siem Reap café, a clothing manufacturer and as computer technicians.

According to the organization, most rural Cambodian families make their living by farming. As the country modernizes, young people without access to quality education face a high risk of lifelong poverty.

More than a bucket and a sponge

Long before they landed their first customer, the boys spent weeks researching detailing techniques, testing products and learning what it takes to run a business. Daniel built the company’s website, where customers can read about services and book appointments online. Apex comes to the customer anywhere in Texarkana.

“It’s satisfying to see a vehicle go from grimy and dull to clean and gleaming,” Mason said. “There is a lot more to it than we knew when we started this project. We didn’t want to just be a couple of teenagers with a cleaning bucket, we wanted to do it right.”

Scheduling, managing expenses and dealing with customers have given both of them a working education in entrepreneurship. They do it around classes, band, cross country, robotics competitions, church and everything else that fills a high school calendar.

Next stop: Cambodia

The boys aren’t finished. Their next goal is to save enough to travel to Cambodia, visit JHP Skola and meet the students now using the lab that bears their names.

Puok sits nearly 9,000 miles from Texarkana. For two teenagers who have spent countless hours working in driveways here, standing inside that classroom would bring the project full circle.

Long after the last car they detail has gotten dirty again, those computers will still be in use.

More information about Apex Mobile Detailing and its services is available on the company’s website.