Thursday
May192011
GATE steps up where hard work is not enough
Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 7:59AM
Please welcome our newest blogger, Lotus Outreach Australia's Charlie Cristi:
I’m Charlie, I’m new to this blog and hope to become a regular contributor. I’m from Australia, on the LOA board, and in the last year I moved to Cambodia on an Australian Government volunteer program to work with LOCAM and the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center on the GATE program (Girls Access To Education). My role at the moment involves interviewing all the scholarship girls and their families. I am discovering what barriers they face when trying to attend school, and what their ambitions are once they graduate. It is exciting work as LOA and LOCAM are using the information to establish an emergency fund, so that the families are enabled to support their daughters’ education. Every child and her family has an amazing story to tell, and I hope to be able to share a few with you.
Still dreaming, with the help of LOA
Today I met an inspirational woman. She is the mother of one of our scholarship girls, and she is one of the most caring people I have come across. Her husband died about ten years ago when he was struck by lightning on the way to work. This is a common cause of death in Cambodia, with this year's death toll hitting 50 over the weekend, before the monsoon season has even started. One minute this family had a father, a husband, and the next they had lost not only a loved one, but also the family’s main provider.
This woman loves her children. When her husband was alive she often suffered from panic attacks when she was thinking about her children and about the life she was providing them. She fainted regularly and struggled to breathe. When her husband died, rather than sinking further into these feelings of helplessness she made a conscious decision to stop them right then and make sure that she would give her children the life they wanted.
She leaves at 3am every day to buy vegetables from the wholesale markets and takes them into a market in Phnom Penh, a few kilometers from her home. She stays there until she has sold all the vegetables. To buy the vegetables she needed to get a loan, so every day she puts money aside to pay off the loan.
Her two older sons are studying at uni, doing engineering and music, and while mum knows there is not a lot of money in music, she wants her son to do what will make him happy.
Often she lays awake at night crying because she knows she can't afford the same luxury for her daughter when she finishes school next year. Her daughter wants to study fashion design and dress making, a lucrative occupation in Cambodia. Already she is spending her spare time helping her aunt in a tailoring shop, and learning as much as she can.
This woman's strength and love for her family needs to be shared and I am happy to be able to put her story into this blog. I look forward to sharing more stories as I meet more amazing girls and their families.
I’m Charlie, I’m new to this blog and hope to become a regular contributor. I’m from Australia, on the LOA board, and in the last year I moved to Cambodia on an Australian Government volunteer program to work with LOCAM and the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center on the GATE program (Girls Access To Education). My role at the moment involves interviewing all the scholarship girls and their families. I am discovering what barriers they face when trying to attend school, and what their ambitions are once they graduate. It is exciting work as LOA and LOCAM are using the information to establish an emergency fund, so that the families are enabled to support their daughters’ education. Every child and her family has an amazing story to tell, and I hope to be able to share a few with you.
Still dreaming, with the help of LOAToday I met an inspirational woman. She is the mother of one of our scholarship girls, and she is one of the most caring people I have come across. Her husband died about ten years ago when he was struck by lightning on the way to work. This is a common cause of death in Cambodia, with this year's death toll hitting 50 over the weekend, before the monsoon season has even started. One minute this family had a father, a husband, and the next they had lost not only a loved one, but also the family’s main provider.
This woman loves her children. When her husband was alive she often suffered from panic attacks when she was thinking about her children and about the life she was providing them. She fainted regularly and struggled to breathe. When her husband died, rather than sinking further into these feelings of helplessness she made a conscious decision to stop them right then and make sure that she would give her children the life they wanted.
She leaves at 3am every day to buy vegetables from the wholesale markets and takes them into a market in Phnom Penh, a few kilometers from her home. She stays there until she has sold all the vegetables. To buy the vegetables she needed to get a loan, so every day she puts money aside to pay off the loan.
Her two older sons are studying at uni, doing engineering and music, and while mum knows there is not a lot of money in music, she wants her son to do what will make him happy.
Often she lays awake at night crying because she knows she can't afford the same luxury for her daughter when she finishes school next year. Her daughter wants to study fashion design and dress making, a lucrative occupation in Cambodia. Already she is spending her spare time helping her aunt in a tailoring shop, and learning as much as she can.
This woman's strength and love for her family needs to be shared and I am happy to be able to put her story into this blog. I look forward to sharing more stories as I meet more amazing girls and their families.
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