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| REFUGE: Narith Horm with Australian Cambodia Foundation founder Geraldine Cox. (Pic: Luke Hemer) |
16 Nov 2011
City Messenger (Australia)
GERALDINE Cox recalls the day a young Cambodian boy arrived on her doorstep seeking refuge.
“He came to us at 13 with no English and he was living alone and sleeping with cows,” Ms Cox says.
“He then went to Blackfriars (Priory School) and was given Cordon Bleu training.
“He said to me yesterday `Before I came to Sunrise, I slept with the cows and now I’m working at the Intercontinental ... how good is that?.”
That boy is Narith Horm, now 21, who has been living in Adelaide for four years and working at the Intercontinental Adelaide for four months.
He is one of thousands of children who have benefitted from the Sunrise Children’s Villages in Cambodia since Ms Cox established the Australia Cambodia Foundation in 1993.
Ms Cox, known as “Big Mum” to the kids, was working for Foreign Affairs for 18 years and was posted to work in embassies in Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Iran and the US.
She resigned to take up a role with Chase Manhattan Bank for eight years but was fired three weeks before her 50th birthday.
“I got jaded with corporate life,” she says.
“I had to reassess what I wanted to do, so I went back to Cambodia and it was the best decision I ever made.”
She set up one orphanage outside Phnom Penh and a second in Siem Reap. An outreach house for 20 teenagers also was established.
Ms Cox, who lives in one of the orphanages, says about 70 of the children she has cared for now work in a range of fields, including hospitality, nursing and IT.
“We get children brought to us from local authorities from domestic violence situations, girls that are in danger of being sexually abused and we also have women, mainly the wives of poor rural farmers who are disabled or have died. In Cambodia there’s no soup kitchens, no social welfare, so if their husbands leave them, they’re stuffed.”
This Saturday, November 19, Ms Cox will hold a “Serenading for Sunrise” cocktail party at the Town Hall.
Money raised will go toward a third orphanage to support 130 to 150 children living with HIV.
Mr Horm says without Ms Cox’s help, he “would be nothing”.
“I would probably be living somewhere on the street,” Mr Horm says.
The event will be hosted by Ray Martin and feature violinist Niki Vasilakis and opera singer Grace Bawden.
3 comments:
That is one of the non-violent ways to build for future and better Cambodia.
Cambodians all around the world should chip in or consider this model to help build such a shelter that provides both a living place and food and last, but not least, education for poor children and those who lack opportunity for it.
Informed and educated citizens will topple a dictator over time or at least in the short run put enough pressures on the dictator to make life more bearable until the final goal of the establishment of a true modern democracy and justice in our suffering and poor country of Cambodia is reached.
Though poor and suffering, Cambodia is the land which all of us, Cambodians still love and remember and definitely will never abandon.
The survival of Cambodia as a nation and a modern one in the 21st century is the ultimate goal of any Cambodians who truly love their country.
Remember money, power and prestige you desire will go with you when you fall from power or vanish from this world, but your love for or betrayal of your country will always remain in the history books for the later generations to praise or condemn respectively.
Pissed off
God bless Geraldine Cox.
Hey Pissed off,
You need to improve your writing skill. My head hurts of trying to make sense of what you said. Now I'm piss!!!!
At 7PM,
You points are taken and they begin to annoy me and other bloggers by repetition postings. Sam Rainsy political career is very astray and soon be forgetting. He's a weak politician who bows to Hun Sen regime and now exile in Europe from his miscalculation maneuver on border posts between Vietnam and Cambodia. Today he tries to incite a hand full of oversea supporters and low-profile western lawmakers to put pressure on Phnom Penh government for his return home prior to next national election. The hopes of SRP's survival is Ms. Mu Sokhua, who work tirelessly to keep the party intact while its leader straying in Paris having steak and fine wine under the sun. SRP must electing new leadership--a leader who is crafty, educated, and not kow tow or sham of any threat from bully Hun Sen regime, Sam Rainsy is not of such qualification. Remember that Sam Rainsy is passive and bookworm-smart and he's no match for street-smart like Hun Sen.
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