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THE AMERICAN CLUB
SEP / OCT 2016
MEMBER
FEATURE
The young woman sat on the edge of the wooden porch
of her house in Mechrey, a floating village on the northern
reaches of the Tonle Sap, west of Siem Reap. She stared
dreamily at the riverbank as her feet splashed gently in
the murky waters below. This was the house of her parents,
the house she, Ratha, was born in. Her father had been
a fisherman for as long as she could remember, and her
mother, despite her poor health, tended the house and
took care of her six younger siblings.
Ratha felt happy to be home for a fewdays to see her family.
Soon she would be heading back to work at the luxurious
and glitzy five-star hotel in central Siem Reap, wearing her
elegant silk uniform and welcoming international guests
from all over the world. As she thought about her life and
how lucky she was, a bright smile lit up her face. "I'll never
forget the day father agreed to let me go to study at Sala
Baï...Mama was so sad to see me go, but both Papa and
her knew in their hearts such an opportunity was rare. It was
a dream come true for our family." she reminisced.
Ratha was just one of the students that our Women On A
Mission (WOAM) team met on our bike tour of Cambodia.
She was one of the lucky students to graduate from Sala
Baï – a hotel and restaurant school that was launched in
2002 by the French NGO 'Agir pour le Cambodge'. Since
its launch, the school has seen more than 1,300 students
graduate and each student has been employed within four
weeks of graduation. During their free 11-month course,
the students study English, French, labor laws and technical
skills for their chosen specialty. Students can study catering,
tourism, front-of-house or the newly launched beauty
therapy. With their new skillset, each student is then able
to earn around three or four times their average household
monthly income, which means the lives of these young
adults and their families are changed forever.
Ratha is now able to help pay for her little siblings to go to
school as well as buy her mother's precious medicine. Like
Ratha's journey, the stories of other Sala Baï students are
heartwarming and often heart wrenching. They remind us
that education can change lives and give young people
from underprivileged backgrounds a brighter future. In a
country like Cambodia, where the primary school dropout
rate is close to 40 percent, Sala Baï is impacting the local
community and making a difference.
While the future for the students of Sala Baï is bright, that
of those school dropouts isn’t always as rosy because
Cambodia is a hunting ground for human traffickers. The
traffickers are reportedly organized crime syndicates,
parents, relatives, friends, intimate partners and neighbors.
Children are trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced
into organized begging rings or factories. A UNICEF survey
found that 35 percent of Cambodia's 15,000 prostitutes are
children under the age of 16.
WOAM’s objective is to champion the cause of
underprivileged and abused women and girls and shine
more light on the tireless work that organizations like Sala
Baï do to empower women and stop human trafficking
in its tracks. Fourteen of our members thus decided to
head to the Cambodian city of Siem Reap to see what
we could do to help.
During our trip in March 2016, the WOAM team visited Sala
Baï during its annual alumni festival and met with students,
graduates, teachers and managers. We were able to
conduct interactive leadership development workshops
at the school to share best practices from the hospitality
industry in Singapore and the region.
We also undertook an arduous 55km bike ride, in blistering
heat, in and around Siem Reap's UNESCO World Heritage
sites and fell in love with the country's magnificent temples
of Angkor, built by the Khmer Empire at the apogee of its
power. Our journey then led us out to the floating village
of Mechrey, where many of Sala Baï's students grew up.
It was our chance to see first-hand how this innovative
project is changing communities. It was there that we met
Ratha, who showed us just how valuable the work of this
NGO has been to her village.
Photo Credit: WOAM
Life
The
Cycle
of
By Christine Amour-Levar