Tour expands orphans' world

Cambodian children give performances to share their culture and to help the orphanages they call home.

September 13, 2007
Eileen Marie Simoneau
Special to the Sentinel
Orlando Sentinel (Florida, USA)

NEW SMRYNA BEACH - In her first visit to the United States, Sreysros Sok soaked up a piece of this country's culture -- a visit to the historic Kennywood thrill park outside Pittsburgh.

After the 13-year-old enjoyed her first roller coaster ride, she and other orphans shared their Cambodian culture in song and dance during a six-week tour of the U.S., including a recent performance at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach.

They smiled while dancing in brightly colored native costumes. They demonstrated a courtship dance -- a graceful tribute to women and rice-field workers.

They delighted audiences with a Cambodian gesture of respect, a bow with raised hands.

The elegant moves offered a stark contrast to the orphans' harsh backgrounds.

Sok, for instance, was 3 when her father was killed and she was abandoned by her mother.

The children are from seven orphanages founded by the Rev. Sinai Phouek, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge period, when an estimated 1.7 million people died from 1975 to 1979 in Cambodia.

South East Asia Prayer Center supports the orphanages financially, said Mark Geppert, founder of the center, an evangelical Christian group based in Oakmont, Pa.

Phouek and his wife, Somolay Y, are trying to make a difference by providing shelter and education for about 200 children.

"You can't change the whole world, but you can change the life of one child," Geppert said.

The U.S. tour also gave the orphans a host of new experiences.

Sitha Phon, 22, attended his first baseball game. He watched the Baltimore Orioles' minor-league team, the Tides, play at Hampton Stadium in Norfolk, Va.

"For myself, I am very happy to just see a baseball game. I don't care which team lost. One day a team can win; another day they lose. It doesn't matter," he said.

"We tried to catch a fly ball with no luck, but after the game we got to run the bases."

Marai Voth, 11, had fun during the tour but was suffering from a dose of homesickness by the time she reached New Smyrna Beach, the second-to-last stop on the tour. She was looking forward to returning to her orphanage, which she considers home.

"We have the same heart," she said. "We help each other. They are my family."

Orphans of war-torn Cambodia sing of new hope

September 07, 2007
By MELANIE STAWICKI AZAM
Staff Writer
Daytona Beach News Journal (Daytona, Florida, USA)

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Many of the children lost their parents to AIDS. Others lost relatives to decades of warfare that left their country in ruins.

But the Cambodian orphans who sang and performed traditional dances Thursday at Atlantic Center for the Arts, moving gracefully across stage in brightly colored native dress, brought a message of new hope, reflected in their smiling faces and confident gestures.

"It's my culture -- everyone in Cambodia needs to carry the culture in their hearts," said Pitou, who, like the other orphans, goes only by his first name. He is a 19-year-old who has been at his orphanage since 1999. "I want to build my culture up, not down."

The young man is one of 20 orphans, ranging in age from 8 to 22, who make up The Cambodian Christian Children's Choir. This is the orphans' first visit to the United States, and their "New Hope" tour started in Pittsburgh on Aug. 14 and wraps up Sept. 22 in California.

The children come from seven orphanages, which are run by New Hope For Orphans, a group founded by Cambodian couple the Rev. Phouek Sinai and his wife, Somalay. The Prayer Center, a faith-based nonprofit located in Oakmont, Pa., has partnered with New Hope on numerous humanitarian projects, including the choir and its tour.

"The theme of the 'New Hope' tour is from the killing fields of Cambodia and all that death and horror -- there's a generation that is the hope for that nation," said Mark Geppert, director of the Prayer Center.

"We want to make people aware of the culture," Sinai said.

The choir's Central Florida performances and lodging are being coordinated by New Smyrna Beach residents Everett and Sandy Foss. Everett Foss is on the board of the Prayer Center and he and his wife have done humanitarian work with the organization throughout Asia.

Christ Community Church in New Smyrna Beach is helping host the choir, whose members will stay at a rented home in New Smyrna and perform at New Smyrna Middle School next week.

"We've got a beach party planned for them and a couple of people from our church have dinner parties planned for them," Everett Foss said.

Last summer, the Fosses visited Cambodia, meeting the orphans and experiencing firsthand the country's struggles to recover and provide its children a better future. The retired couple said Cambodia still faces plenty of challenges, such as high unemployment, poverty and a lack of electricity and schools.

But the roughly 200 orphans at New Hope also embody the optimism Cambodians have for their country, Sandy Foss said, because the youngsters are "being schooled, taken care of (and) becoming the leaders for tomorrow."

Geppert said the Cambodian government has set a moratorium on foreign adoption of its orphans and set a nationwide goal to revive the country by educating its young people.

"So they become the national leaders in this new generation," he said.

Sitha, 20, said conditions are improving in his country "step by step." He said he's hopeful that Cambodia's economy will grow to provide jobs for its overwhelmingly young population because "a lot of the students are hopeless because it's hard to find jobs after school."

The Sinais recounted how they both lost family after Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Somalay said she even witnessed the killing of her father. Both of them fled and eventually met in a refugee camp in Thailand. They both became Christians and returned to Cambodia in the 1990s to start their first orphanage.

"I want to build a young generation for the nation of Cambodia, because a lot of people died in the past," Phouek Sinai said.

In partnership with New Hope For Orphans, the Prayer Center is now helping to set up 25 model schools throughout Cambodia, Geppert said. The first school is already up and running, serving more than 1,800 students in grades K-11, he said.

melanie.stawicki@news-jrnl.com

Did You Know?

The true story of the friendship between a New York Times reporter and his Cambodian interpreter is the basis of the 1984 film "The Killing Fields."

• Based on an article written by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sydney Schanberg, the movie starred Sam Waterston as Schanberg and a Cambodian doctor, Haing S. Ngor, in his film debut, as friend and interpreter Dith Pran.
• The movie tells the story of how Dith Pran is left behind when his American friends are evacuated after the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975 and endures the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime. He survives to be reunited with Schanberg in 1979.
• Ngor received the Best Supporting Oscar for his role in the film and went on to act in other movies and television shows.
• Ngor, who witnessed the starvation and death of his family, was shot to death in Los Angeles in 1996.

Compiled by News Researcher Peggy Ellis from filmsite.org; imdb.com

War-Torn History

• 1863: Cambodia becomes a protectorate of France.
• 1953: Cambodia wins its independence. Under King Sihanouk, it becomes the Kingdom of Cambodia.
• 1965: Sihanouk, by now head of state, allows North Vietnam to set up bases in Cambodia during the Vietnamese conflict with the U.S.
• 1969: The U.S. begins to secretly bomb the military bases.
• 1970: The prime minister, General Lon Nol, assumes power and proclaims the Khmer Republic. Sihanouk, in exile in China, forms a guerrilla movement, the communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas.
• 1975: The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, overthrows Lon Nol. At least 1.7 million people die during the next three years due to torture, starvation, disease or hardships.
• 1979: The Vietnamese capture Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. Retreating to Thailand, Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge wage a guerrilla war.
• 1991: A peace agreement is signed in Paris.
• 1993: A three-party coalition is formed. Sihanouk becomes king again and the country is renamed the Kingdom of Cambodia.
• 2004: King Sihanouk abdicates and is succeeded by his son Norodom Sihamoni.

SOURCES: news.bbc.co.uk/, state.gov
Complied by News Researcher Helen Morey.

More Music

The Cambodian Christian Children's Choir will perform at these other Central Florida venues:

• 2:30 p.m. today at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
• 4-8 p.m. Saturday at the East Coast Cruisers Car Show on Canal Street in New Smyrna Beach.
• 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. Sunday at Christ Community Church, 1210 Mission Drive, New Smyrna Beach.
• 7 p.m. Wednesday at International Christian Centre, 101 Indigo Drive, Daytona Beach.

Cambodian children's choir travels far with hope

Friday, August 17, 2007
By William Loeffler
Pittsbugh TRIBUNE-REVIEW (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA)

To the members of the Cambodian Christian Children's Choir, America has three rivers, a submarine and a lot of people who wear black and gold.

Their pastor, Sinai Phouek, tried to shrug off his jet lag as his young charges clambered aboard the U.S.S. Requin at the Carnegie Science Center on a bright and sticky Thursday morning. The 21-member choir makes its American debut at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium.

"This is really amazing for them to come such a long way," Phouek says.

He could well have been talking about the country itself. The group of Cambodian orphans, aged 8 to 20, are at least a generation removed from the communist genocide of the Khmer Rouge, who murdered 2 million people from 1975-79. The children, plucked from poverty on the streets, are products of a country whose medical and educational systems are still in shambles and where HIV and child prostitution are rampant. Doctors and teachers in Cambodia were among the first to be murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

The choir hopes to promote Cambodian culture and causes on their six-week "New Hope" tour. It came about thanks to a Christian partnership that stretches from Oakmont to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.

In 1991, Mark and Eleanor Geppert founded South East Asia Prayer Center, a nonprofit evangelical Christian aid organization, in Oakmont. They operate in 16 countries and regions, including Thailand, Laos and Tibet. They met Phouek during one of their missionary trips to Cambodia. Phouek founded New Hope for Orphans, which now operates seven orphanages in Cambodia. The two joined forces to rescue, feed and educate Cambodia's children. Most of the children lost one or both parents to HIV. Some were abandoned by a widowed mother or father when that parent remarried.

Phouek and his wife, Somalay, are Khmer Rouge survivors. Thursday, Phouek pointed to a scar on his cheek, where he says a bullet grazed him during a Khmer Rouge massacre. He survived by playing dead, he says.

His 11-year-old daughter, Rebecca, has dark almond eyes and a coltish energy. She wears a Steelers cap but says she likes WWE Wrestling. She's the only member of the choir who is not an orphan.

Asked what she would like people to know about Cambodia, she says, "What we eat, what our traditions are. The Khmer Rouge, they killed a lot of people."

The South East Asia Prayer Center raised the $60,000 necessary to bring them to America, Mark Geppert says.

"There's not any real financial motive in what we're doing. It's more of an awareness and to give the kids this opportunity. They come from one of the poorest countries on earth."

Choir member Pitou Chan, 19, was abandoned by his father after his mother died. He and his sister, who is deaf and mute, lived on the streets and foraged in garbage dumps before being rescued by New Hope.

"It's like a new world," he says. "When I was young, I wanted to go to the United States."

The children tour the Pittsburgh Children's Museum today and visit Kennywood Park on Monday.

Bob Roth, owner of Roth Automotive in Oakmont, raises money for the South East Asia Prayer Center by restoring and selling automobiles. He also collects and sells donated scrap metal, including refrigerators, stoves, washers and dryers.

Roth, who has conducted 30 missionary trips to Cambodia, Mexico and Guatemala, estimates he has raised about $15,000 for the South East Asia Prayer Center.

"I've just grown close to the Cambodians, such a genuine loving, caring people.

"The lord has kind of led me to this group. It's something that sometimes you can't explain. You just know that that's where you need to be."

The choir's tour includes stops in Virginia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Florida and California.
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Cambodian Christian Children's Choir

When, where and admission:

Saturday

• 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium, One Wild Place, Highland Park. Free with admission.
• 7 p.m. New Life Christian Ministries, 127 Knoch Road, Saxonburg. Free.

Sunday

8, 9:30 and 11 a.m. Riverside Community Church, 410 Allegheny Ave., Oakmont. Free.

Aug. 25

• 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., South Side Works, South Side;
• 6 p.m., Northway Christian Community Church, 12121 Perry Highway, McCandless. Free.

Aug. 26

8 and 10 a.m., Northway Christian Community Church. Free.

Details: 412-826-9063 or online.

William Loeffler can be reached at wloeffler@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7986.