Month 1 draft Assignment

Hi everyone!

Now I am posting my VOF month 1 draft assignment to ask some ideas from you all so it may help me to make my profile better. I am happy to get all your feedback! Thank you:)

My Interview:

Manrath Kong, a young Cambodian talented lady, 25, is working for KruKhmer Organization which is meant in English is Khmer Teacher Organization as a NGO Facility at Siem Ream Town, Cambodia. She is a daughter of a low class family from the south Siem Reap town and her parents have divorced since she was 3 years old. When she finished High School in 2003, she traveled to Phnom Penh City to find a suitable job for supporting her younger brother and sister as well as wish to pursue her study at College. She is now pursuing her Bachelor study in Rural Development at Angkor University. Even she discontinued her study immediately because she has no enough time to study as she has to work hard to earn money for her younger siblings to study and she has also spent time to teach the poor children. Now her younger brother and sister already finished High School and they have also worked at KruKhmer NGO.

Ms. Manrath can speak three languages are Japan, Thai and English which Khmer is her mother tongue language. After she spent 4 years teaching English and Japenese at NGO in Phnom Penh, in 2007 she moved back to live in Siem Reap where has always been heard about Angkor Wat Temple and also her hometown. Since she loves educate young generation how to be strong and to struggle the obstacles, she has still taught Japanese and Thai languages almost 12 years now and she hopes what she has done for them will make them have a bright future.

She said so friendly to me “the first time I arrived in Phnom Penh City where was full of modern things, everyone looked to me as strange as I was walking along the road to my relative’s house and I encouraged and told myself that “I’m a strong lady so I will bring a change back to my village to help the poor people and empower women and girls to study so I have to be brave and go forward without giving up.” She added, finally I got my relative’s house, I felt so happy as I thought I had a family in Phnom Penh but actually what I had thought was just a dream as they weren’t happy to let me stay in their house so I decided to find another place to live. She is a strong lady whose vision is to work and help the poor young girls to study and her plan is to help all the poor people even the disabled people, women or girls.

Until 2008, Ms. Manrath met a Japanese lady who came to visit Angkor Wat in Cambodia and she was so happy to know Ms. Manrath as she was her guide. After they have known each other for awhile, the Japanese lady decided to create an NGO where now called KruKhmer NGO and Ms. Manrath is a partner who controls everything in that NGO. She said that my NGO aim is to empower women and girls to help themselves to live by learning training skill such as knitting, how to make a raw material become a shampoo or soap by using hands without machine etc., the reason we have chosen the raw material to train and teach them to do it because since the Rural Cambodia has still been alarmed so it is the best way for helping them from poverty after they have learned how to make those natural resource by hands so they will be able to use what they have learned to make their own business for helping their living lives.

According to the statistic of the poverty in rural areas in Cambodia has been shown that Poverty in Cambodia, 5.6 million or 40% of Cambodians live below the national poverty line, 4.8 million or 34.1% of Cambodians live on less than $1 a day, 10.9 million or 77.7% of Cambodians live on less than $2 a day, only 57% of children reach Grade 5, Cambodia’s infant mortality rate of 143 deaths per 1000 births is one of the highest in the world, Cambodia has the highest prevalence of tuberculosis in Asia at 700 per 100,000, over 70% of urban dwellers live in slums.

In this point, Ms. Manrath said “When I see their hardship like this, I feel so sad and I asked myself what I should do to help the young children to be illiterate?”. As Cambodia is still being developed and most of poor rural areas cannot get education so I decided to open an English and Japanese Class at home to teach those children for free of charge and I teach them by myself in the evening time and weekend.

In 2009, she met an orphan who was just 5 months at her old organization where she ever worked there. The little child cried and cried and he made her cried too as he reminded her about the day that her parents divorced and her father left her and her mother. So Ms. Manrath decided to take the child as her son even she is still single and this point is a kindness of her that she is happy to raise this little child as Cambodia tradition is still not allowed to have a child before marriage but she does.

I was so surprised to hear that she has adopted a son and I asked her how she feels, “I can live with peace and freedom if just the others say I have a child without a husband or marriage, thus I have never cared their thought because what I have done is just want to save a little child who needs warm from his parents, especially he needs a mother and the saddest thing for me is to leave him at the orphanage organization alone so it is not bad to take and raise him without a husband and marriage”, she said strongly.