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Tuesday, 12 April 2011 Written by Richard Grunert The Western Front (Western Washington U., USA)
For some young Cambodian Americans, staying in touch with their culture is hard in a place so radically different from their homeland.
At Western, some of these students have formed a place where they can celebrate their culture.
For Channy Kong, a sophomore born in Cambodia, the Khmer Students Association is a place to keep her traditions alive.
“It helps me keep my culture on my mind,” Kong said. “It’s important to stay in touch with your roots and to really care for your culture because it’s the responsibility of the individual to carry on the culture, the culture isn’t going to carry on itself.”
On April 9, the first annual Cambodian New Year’s dinner was held in the Viking Union Multi-Purpose Room. The dinner, an event put on by the recently revived Khmer (pronounced “k-mai”) Student Association, was a celebration of Cambodian heritage and culture. It included traditional dances, songs, a martial arts demonstration and a speech by a Cambodian genocide survivor.
Police officers carry a body during a search and rescue operation in the earthquake and tsunami-devastated city of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, northeastern Japan, March 23, 2011. (Photo: AP)
Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer Washington, DC Wednesday, 23 March 2011
"I tried every means to get through to her, but there was no answer.”
Tea Seang Houng had just been shopping for dinner with a friend in a mall in Sendai city, Miyagi prefecture, when the earthquake began.
“When we were out of the shopping mall and got to the car park, our car was shaking, along with others. It was a tremendous shake,” Tea Seang Houng, a linguistic student, said Monday, as a guest on “Hello VOA.”
“My friend told me it was an earthquake, but I thought she was just joking,” she said. “Only when it kept shaking did I start to realize it was definitely a strong earthquake.”
It was Tea Seang Houng’s first experience with such a powerful earthquake, which was later measured up to 9.0 on the Richter scale and set off a massive tsunami. So far, the March 11 disaster has killed more than 9,000 people.
Portrait of Smot singer Srey Pov. Srey Pov is a student and performer with Cambodia Living Arts in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia. Smot Chanting is a complex and demanding way of melodically reciting Khmer and Pali literature, and is an integral form of singing unique to Khmer mourning.
Cambodian Living Arts works to support the revival of traditional Khmer performing arts and to inspire contemporary artistic expression. CLA supports arts education, mentorship, networking opportunities, education, career development, and income generating projects for master performing artists who survived the Khmer Rouge as well as the next generation of student artists.
Thursday, September 30, 2010 By Natalie Villacorta Contributing Writer The Brown Daily Herald (Brown University, USA)
The McCormack Family Theater transformed into a Buddhist temple Wednesday afternoon. Sreypov Phoeun, who recites traditional Cambodian poetry known as Khmer poetry or "smot," was invited to perform by Visiting Fellow in the Watson Institute for International Relations Tararith Kho.
Smot is an almost vanished art form, said Visiting Professor of Literary Arts Robert Coover, who introduced the performance. Kho is working to revive this dying art, but though he writes Khmer poetry, he does not recite it, he told The Herald. That's where Sreypov Phoeun comes in. She can recite the poetry, but does not write it.
Smot is usually performed at funerals and other Buddhist ceremonies, Phoeun explained before reciting her first poem. But this was no average poetry reading. Phoeun sang the poems, which were sorrowful tales of family, faith, beauty and hunger.
Her somber tone was relevant in light of the recent death of poet and former literary arts professor Michael Gizzi, whom Coover mentioned respectfully in his introduction.
This performance was an unusual opportunity, Coover told the audience, because the literary arts program would not have had the funding to host Phoeun if she were not already in the country on a one-month tour.
Phoeun told The Herald she was invited by several Cambodian Buddhist temples to perform during the recent religious festival of Pchum Ben, when Cambodians pay respect to their ancestors. She said she visited Stanford University and Las Vegas before coming to Brown.
The first poem was in English, but still written in the style of traditional Cambodian poetry. It was difficult to understand what Phoeun was saying, but this proved unimportant, as the meaning was conveyed through the way she sung. Her voice was entrancing and her range remarkable. Her voice gradually slipped lower and lower and then abruptly climbed to a high note, her mouth only slightly open, widening only to breathe. Phoeun sat perfectly still, her back straight, hands neatly clasped in her lap, eyes softly closed.
While singing, she appeared extremely calm, but became flustered when the audience called for an encore. She reluctantly consented, admitting, "I feel a little bit nervous." Before beginning her last piece, she said that though audience members could not understand her language, they could understand what the songs were about just by listening.
Phoeun said there are over 60 ways to sing each smot poem. She could not explain how she learned to translate poems into song or how she chooses which style to sing them in, but said she was taught by masters in her village in Kampong Speu Province.
She concluded her performance by urging audience members to visit Cambodia if they were interested in learning more.
More than 28,000 students graduated from 45 private and 18 state institutions last year, but the number who went on to jobs is not known. (Photo: AP)
Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer Phnom Penh Thursday, 26 August 2010
“A student may end up jobless after graduation, so this is a high risk business.”
A lack of protections and an unpredictable job market have made lending institutions reluctant to provide student loans, banking officials say.
Students may be hard-pressed to find work after they graduate a university or they may simply not finish school. This has led to closed doors for poor students, especially in the countryside.
“If we do this, it is very risky, because we don't know whether students will finish their educations,” Sophan Nary, deputy CEO for Acleda Bank, told VOA Khmer Tuesday. “Only if the students can earn some income to pay the bank back monthly can we consider offering them loans. Or only if they have guarantees to make sure the bank can get back the money it lent.”
But even with some guarantees, lending institutions are reluctant.
“Some students are orphans, so we need to consider the guarantees also,” said Horn Rozana, the chief executive officer’s secretary for Phnom Penh Commercial Bank.
Nearly 40,000 students graduate from high school in 2007, the latest figures from the Ministry of Education show, and officials say the number is increasing yearly. But the high cost of education means that many do not finish their university studies, which cost an average $1,600 for four years.
And with no system in place to avoid risks for lenders, much of that money has to be saved ahead of time or earned along the way.
“Unlike in developed countries where they have social security numbers for their citizens, in Cambodia an individual identity cannot be tracked down,” Chea Phalarin, general manager of Amret, a microfinance institution, said. “If the person goes to a far away province or somewhere else, how can we get him to pay back the money he owes if we do not know where he is?”
Amret will sometimes offer loans to parents, who are less risk, he said. “We can’t lend to students directly because we are not confident they can pay back the money.”
In places like the US, where student loans are common, graduates begin paying back their loans after they find employment. But in Cambodia, the job market is uncertain, creating another roadblock to lending.
More than 28,000 students graduated from 45 private and 18 state institutions last year, but the number who went on to jobs is not known.
“A student may end up jobless after graduation, so this is a high risk business,” said Kong Phean, a brand developer for Cambodia Mutual Savings and Credit Network, or CMSC.
CMSC did provide 13 students with loans in 2009, but that went to students at well-known universities who were at least in their third year.
“Those in third year are less likely to drop out of school,” Kong Phean said.
There is also a belief among some lenders that school tuition is not high enough to warrant loans.
“Tuition at the moment is still affordable for most families to support their children’s education, so the demand for student loans is still not huge,” said Bun Mony, CEO of Sathapana Ltd., a microfinance lender.
Mak Vann, a secretary of state for the Education Ministry, said the ministry wants as many students to go to university as possible, but Cambodia needs to put a system in place.
“There is still a lot more to learn, say, on how it is done in the US for example,” he said.
And the ministry does offer up as many as 4,000 scholarships a year to poor high school graduates, he said.
For students like Mok Socheat, who borrowed $400 a year ago from CMSC, loans are worth it, even if he has to pay interest.
“It helped reach my goal,” he said, having landed a job as a machine operator for an electric company after graduating from the Cambodian Institute of Technology. “Without the loans, I would probably not have finished my students and would not have this job.”
Students and teachers from the Khmer Teacher Association protest in Phnom Penh March 28, 2010. Some 300 protesters demonstrated to discourage female students from wearing short skirts to school. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea Teachers and students from the Khmer Teacher Association protest in Phnom Penh March 28, 2010. Some 300 protesters demonstrated to discourage female students from wearing short skirts to school. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Chea Sokha, VOA Khmer Original report from Washington DC 04/05/2007
Jimmy Chan, a 21-year-old Cambodian student at Virginia Tech, said this week that despite the recent murders there, he isn't going anywhere.
He was preparing to go to school on April 16, the third-year undergraduate said in a telephone interview from his home in Blacksburg, Virginia, when his sister, who works at the university called him.
Two people had been killed, he said, but he wasn't worried. That might have been normal, he said.
It was the beginning of the worst university killing in US history, but at first, Chan said, it seemed small. As he watched the story unfold on television, shock set it. He didn't think one person could kill so many.
In the end, 31 people were killed, along with the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho.
The school is now in mourning, but Chan said he plans to continue classes. He feels strange at times, he said, being Asian at the University, wearing his favorite black shirt. People said Cho wore black shirts and was withdrawn. But Chan said he tries not to worry about that.
