Een inspirerend verhaal

Sommige cambodjaanse studenten hebben een "sponsor".  Dat is meestal een buitenlander, die geld geeft, om de studies van deze studenten te betalen. Op de school waar ik les geef zijn er zo ook een aantal studenten die een sponsor hebben en hun middelbare school kunnen starten, en afwerken, op deze manier.  

Een van hen, een meisje, een wees, verzamelde afval om dit in te ruilen voor geld om daarmee voedsel te kunnen komen.  Dankzij haar "sponser", doet ze nu haar middelbare school, en kon ze enkele weken geleden naar Amerika.  Daar heeft ze Michelle Obama en Hillary Clinton ontmoet.  Over haar stond er vorige week een artikeltje in Newsweek (met een foto van haar in haar schooluniform):

Women in the World: Sokha Chen, Cambodia

by Richard E. Robbins

The city dump in Phnom Penh was the foulest 100 acres in Cambodia. The smell was nauseating, the smoke was choking, and the garbage itself was dangerous. Sokha Chen's legs still bear the scars of countless cuts, stabs, and burns from the four years she spent scavenging for bits of metal and plastic. But today those scars are covered by the bright yellow socks that are part of her uniform at Zaman Academy, one of Cambodia's best private schools. At 16, Sokha is a top student, as well as an accomplished classical dancer. Her life now would have seemed an impossible dream just a few years ago.
Sokha Chen (Photo: Agnes Dherbeys / VII for Newsweek) Orphaned at age 9, Sokha left her village for Phnom Penh, where one of the few ways a child can earn money is to pick through the dump. That's where Chicagoan Bill Smith found her three years ago. Smith had come to Cambodia a few years earlier to adopt. But instead of just returning home with one child, he wound up founding a center that is home to 100 children from the dump and surrounding slums. Called A New Day Cambodia, it gave Sokha her first real chance to show what she could achieve, not simply what she could endure. She has been moved to successively better schools as she outstrips the other students, demonstrating a remarkable talent for languages. What is most remarkable, though, is her resilience and her optimism. She doesn't mind talking about her painful past, but she prefers to describe the school she will open for poor kids, and the house she wants to buy for her sister. "I have a bright future," she says with a grin. "I want all Cambodian kids to have a bright future too."