Magazine Sep-Oct 2016

Life The Cycle of By Christine Amour-Levar

MEMBER FEATURE

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.

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.

Photo Credit: WOAM

While the future for the students of Sala Baï is bright, that of those school dropouts isn’t always as rosy because

37 THE AMERICAN CLUB SEP / OCT 2016