Loeun Sinaet
In Her Own Words
My family is penurious because there are many children and my parents only do subsistence farming, that’s why I faced a lot of difficulties going to school. When I transitioned from primary to lower secondary school, my father got seriously sick; his limbs were numb and he couldn’t do anything, so a heavy load fell on my mother working on the farm alone to support the family and keep four children in school.
Since my mother couldn’t afford to support every child’s education, my elder brother had to drop out to help earn income to support the family. While I still could stay in school then, my mother made me do many things such as taking care of my younger siblings, making Khmer cakes to sell, feeding pigs, and many other chores, so that she could go do labor work to buy study materials for me. She wanted me to finish at least lower secondary school, so that I wouldn’t be ignorant like her. Because of my mother’s devotion and sacrifice, I was spiritually motivated to struggle to stay in school until my teacher found out about my situation and told me to apply for a GATE scholarship from Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center (CWCC) and Lotus Outreach. I asked for application form from the school principal and applied for it. Not long after that, CWCC’s working group came to my home to inquire and check on my family’s living standard and environment. When the result was released, my name also among the successful candidates, so I was accepted into the program in 2004 when I was in 7th grade at Svay Chek Lower Secondary School. After passing the national board exam at 9th grade, I went to 10th grade at Svay Chek Upper Secondary School under funding support from Lotus Outreach. LO kept supporting me until I passed the high school national board exam (12th grade) in August 2010. Graduating from high school was the first and biggest achievement in my life. I was very happy and especially felt honored that the scholarship program organized a graduation ceremony to celebrate this achievement with the presence of Lotus Outreach’s representative, sister Raksmey.
Nowadays I am studying at University of Management and Economics (UME) in Banteay Mean Chey Province, majoring in Finance and Banking, with annual school fee of $300 for year one. This is a big amount of money and my parents had to illegally migrate to work in Thailand to support my education. Even with my parents working in Thailand, I still didn’t have enough to pay for other expenses such as school uniform, accommodation, electricity, water, food, textbooks and documents. After getting the support from the donor through CWCC, I am very happy and hope that you will continue to support me until I finish all 4 years at university because my family cannot afford to support my education. |
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