You can read my history in the Lonely Planet book in the Battambang section. However, I have the honor to tell you about my life. I lived in a poor family in Baydomram village along the way to Wat Banan, it 20 km from Battambang city.  I left home to Battambang to study when I was 13 years old and I stayed at a pagoda with the monks.  I worked very hard every day. I did both my own tasks and the pagoda's tasks for the monks. My walk of life was a bit rough but I tried my best to struggle with destiny and nature. At school, I was social but I was not the cleverest student in the class. I liked reading books for fun ( khmer literature, history and sociological stories).  And I studied a lot. Additionally, I liked learning English.  And my dream was that in the future I wanted to become a leader or founder.

When I graduated high school in 1996, I volunteered to work with some NGO's to learn about NGO's work. And then, I found a full time job with an NGO after I got married in 2000.  Because I still had not reached my goal, I tried to learn more and more about NGO's work and also studied at University in Human Resource Management (HRM).  When my NGO work ended, I became a tourguide after the Director passed away. I worked as a tourguide for around a year. Because I knew a lot about local culture, customs and had a lot of interesting information my tour work went well.

One day, I took my tour group to see the countryside. Many children came around us and it seemed that they wanted to communicate with us in English but they could not speak it. So I felt I wanted to teach them some words in English so they could speak with my tourists. In just a few minutes they could speak with my tourists.  And after that, I asked them:  Do you want to study more English with me? And if I were to open a school for English here, would you come to learn?  They answered "YES".

When I came back home I started thinking about this for a long time. And finally, I contacted the authority about opening a school there.  They said "OK".  

So then I started to do family assessments and I found that their living conditions were poor. So I felt that if we can help their children to have more knowledge in English, they can help their family in the future. They would be able to also become tour guides and they could earn money to help support their families.

Another major problem area I discovered was that firstly, many children are far away from a school in their rural area, secondly, many children dropped out of school for many reasons and thirdly, many parents kept their children from going to school because they needed the extra hands to work on the land. 

As mentioned above, I decided to open a school called "Cambodia Education Center/ Children's Action for Development."

I have been working with Cambodia Education Center/Children's Action for Development ever since and I still do the work as a tourguide as well when time allows.  

For more information, you can come to visit us and I hope I will see you there.

Thank you for your interest.