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THE AMERICAN CLUB
SEP / OCT 2016
Cambodian history is fascinating even if marred by
terrible violence and bloodshed. But it was when King
Sihanouk was overthrown in 1970 and Cambodia was
renamed the Khmer Republic that Cambodia entered its
darkest period...The Khmer Rouge killed nearly 1.5 million
Cambodians and as many as 3 million from 1975 to 1979,
spreading like a virus from the jungles until they controlled
the entire country, only to systematically dismantle and
destroy it in the name of a Communist agrarian ideal.
Today, more than 35 years after Vietnamese soldiers
removed the Khmer Rouge from power, the genocide
trials still continue – a bittersweet note of progress in an
impoverished nation still struggling to rehabilitate its
crippled economic and human resources. As we cycled
through the countryside we saw the scars from its war
years, including the Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge
had slaughtered millions.
Despite the fact that Cambodia has faced such horrors
and is still a poor country, there is every reason to be
optimistic about its future. In the early years of the 21st
Century, the Cambodian economy grew rapidly. As
of today, the textile industry in Cambodia is booming
and so is tourism, and in 2005 oil was discovered in
the sea off Cambodia. But if you had any concerns
about the future of the country, the Sala Baï scheme
would instantly placate them. No longer do the young
women of Cambodia see only one way out. Education
has been proven to be one of the most effective ways
to nip human trafficking in the bud. As they say, if you
educate a woman you educate a nation...or in this
case, save a community.
WomenOnAMission (WOAM) is an non-profit organization headquartered
in Singapore, which combines challenging self-funded expeditionary
travel to remote locations around the world in support of humanitarian
causes. The objective of this Cambodia bike trip was to raise awareness
and funds for Sala Baï, a hotel and restaurant training school in Siem
Reap that is moving mountains to stop human trafficking in its tracks.