How This Mom Saved Her Family from Disaster

Pich Khorn, 53, and her husband, Dom Soy, 54, live in a small house in Slarlak village in western Cambodia. They have two teenage sons, a widowed daughter and an infant grandchild who live with them. Khorn rents land from a neighbor to grow rice for her family’s daily needs.

Floods hit their village in October 2013 and destroyed the family’s rice paddy. Immediately, the disaster forced their oldest son and the daughter to seek work outside Cambodia. Their younger son had to drop out of school to help his parents get by by doing household chores while they went out to earn money as day laborers.

CWS prioritized working with the Khorn and Soy family together with our strong network of partners in the region: Rural Development Association, DanChurchAid and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department.

In July 2014, Khorn met with CWS recovery team members to decide the most productive way to use a small cash grant. Khorn joined with community members who were also receiving grants and together they brainstormed on how best she could spend the funds. Khorn decided to spend her grant in part for rice and basic food to feed her family. She bought green mustard and string bean seeds and gardening tools to grow the vegetables. Soon, there was food both for the family to eat and also to earn a small income.

After a few months, Khorn combined her vegetable sales earnings and her husband’s day labor wage savings to start a small grocery shop. Soy helps his wife run the store and works in the garden plot and no longer has to go too far from Slarlak for daily wage labor. Khorn is gradually growing her business by responding to requests for products from other villages.

The couple’s success means that both their son and daughter have been able to come home and help run the grocery shop as it keeps expanding. The family no longer worries about food shortages as before. Khorn has gained self-confidence and has become more optimistic about the future and is now active in village matters.

When visiting with CWS team members, Khorn expressed her thanks to everyone involved in helping her and her family recover after the floods. It is a point of pride and hope for the CWS Cambodia team that Khorn had the strength and courage in the face of disaster to organize her family to rebuild and reunite. Now her family is financially secure and more able to withstand future natural disasters in the region, which are inevitably to come.

That is something all CWS supporters can take pride in.

Storyteller: Pich Khorn, Cambodia

New Life, New Friends

I visited Seng Nu “Sandy” Pan and Ni Hluan at their two-bedroom apartment near Duke University last week to talk about the changes in their lives since being resettled by CWS. Their apartment is sparsely decorated, but homey and personal nonetheless. They both greeted me with their usual energy and enthusiasm. A few months ago, they were both star pupils in my intermediate-level English class. Nowadays I do not see them a lot, so it was good to catch up and talk.

When I asked the two young women about their lives before coming to the United States, their eyes glazed over. The glimmer faded from their cheerful faces and the laughter bouncing off of their apartment walls froze mid-echo and fell to the ground. After a few long moments, they start to mention their “problems” and “troubles,” but chose not to go any deeper. It’s clear that these women have more on their minds than their difficult childhoods.

As teenagers, Sandy and Ni Hluan fled to Malaysia from war-torn Burma in search of safety and stability. In Malaysia, they worked long hours in restaurants. At the end of March 2014, after waiting for longer than four years, they were accepted to travel to the United States as refugees. The CWS office in Durham, North Carolina, welcomed them with a comfortable apartment, a warm meal and resources to help them start a new life in the United States. “Everyone at CWS was so polite,” Sandy said. Even though the two friends are happily employed—Sandy as a server in a restaurant and Ni Hluan as a sushi chef at Whole Foods—they both have bigger ambitions.

When we talked of their plans for the future, all the tension from speaking about the past melted away; they erupted with enthusiasm. Earlier this year, they both placed into Durham Technical Community College’s highest-level ESL classes. They hope to continue their education at Durham Tech as nursing students. “Going to college is the most important for us,” Sandy said.

I asked Sandy and Ni Hluan if they have any parting words, anything that they don’t want left unsaid. They fell silent for nearly a minute before Sandy spoke up: “I’m very happy to be here. This is my dream to be in another country.” Ni Hluan agreed. “New life. New transition. Really happy.”

Storyteller: Edwin Harris, United States

From Decrepit Classrooms to a Praise-Worthy School: How Parents and Teachers in a Kenyan Village Did It

When Head Teacher (Principal) Sasi Kabaka took the reins at Gosese Primary School in Western Kenya, Gosese was a “school” in name only.

“The picture that one could visualize of this place was horrifying,” Kabaka recalled. Students were being instructed under the shade of trees; what few classrooms did stand were doing so only barely. “There were just small five feet by four feet structures that actually were supposed to be condemned.”

The mere 47 students enrolled that year were taught by three instructors. Newly assigned educators were instantly discouraged at the sight of the crumbling and secluded campus. An assignment to this school felt like a punishment. Consequently, “there were no role models here,” Head Teacher Kabaka lamented.

All that changed when dedicated teachers solicited the help of the government, businesses, and NGO’s, including the CWS Africa School Safe Zones program, which recognized the potential in Kabaka and his fellow teachers and offered encouragement and training that has transformed Gosese Primary School.

Kenyan primary institutions typically provide classes up to eighth grade, but Gosese did not accommodate children beyond fourth. The government used Gosese as a “feeder school,” from which students were expected to go to a distant school for fifth grade. Sadly, the more distant schools were never fed for long.

“Once they were moved to other schools, after a few months they would drop out,” Kabaka explained.

The decrepit infrastructure and unmotivated teachers at Gosese set students up for failure. “We had very muddy classrooms,” remembers Frederick Mwita, senior teacher and the only staff member who has been at Gosese longer than Kabaka. “Our learners were sitting on stones and that was making learning very difficult.”

His disgust with the grave neglect suffered by the resilient students of Gosese Primary School led Head Teacher Kabaka to vow to find a way to give the children the role model they had long been deprived of.

Kabaka and his staff protested the Ministry of Education’s intention to continue using Gosese as a feeder and presented his proposal to revitalize the school. “He said we are going to remain firm to make sure that this school grows to higher levels,” Fredrick Mwita recalls.

Were the government officials offended by this objection?

“No, in fact they were impressed,” Kabaka said with a laugh, “and they gave us support. We convinced them. We told them that these kids need quality education and we had the will to assist them. They were very positive, and they accepted. So, the idea of making it a feeder school was shelved, and now they are really supporting us.”

With this green light, Sasi Kabaka and his band of teachers embarked on a reformation, but how long could their ambition endure without adequate resources and support?

Thanks to its compassionate donors, CWS was able to fan the flames of their fire by providing the school with necessities including desks and a seed grant of 4,500 USD towards the construction of classrooms.

CWS also organized peer learning events so that teachers and parents could learn successful strategies from their counterparts in other CWS School Safe Zones; held training sessions for the small staff and school management committee (parent teacher organization), helped teachers persuade parents of the importance of a good education– including for girls– and the importance of raising funds to improve the school’s infrastructure.

As a result of the CWS seed grant and training in fundraising, parents were able to solicit most of the money required for classroom construction themselves by obtaining grants from the government, area businesses, and the community.

Added encouragement came when, for the very first time, a Gosese alumnus advanced to secondary school. Recently, the Kenyan Government showed its support for Gosese by honoring its request for an additional teacher, which brings the staff to eight. There school also has a new fifth grade. Most impressive, though, is the school’s growth from 47 students in 2007 to 271 students by 2013 and the addition of a fifth grade.

Alongside CWS, the staff and parents of Gosese changed the lives of everyone in the community—and for the first time, gave their students role models to emulate.

Storyteller: Sasi Kabaka, Kenya

What Education Meant to One Refugee Mother

Amal* fled from violence in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan to find safety for herself and her three children in Egypt. CWS partner St. Andrew’s Refugee Services offers psychosocial support, legal assistance and education services for refugees and other vulnerable migrants in Cairo, her new home. As Amal describes, “I came here to ask for help. [One of the program directors] looked at our situation and immediately started helping. That day, when she first saw us…for three days I had gone without food for the kids.”

Amal’s was situation was assessed and staff worked with UNHCR to identify support that was available. “I restarted my studies. I started Arabic classes… They opened everything so I had what I needed,” Amal says. “This is what improved my situation, because I started doing lovely things I like to do, teaching my kids.”

Smiling, she reflects on the difference StARS has made for her. “Really, there was a change. When I arrived here, I didn’t know how to read and write. I had no previous educational background. Because of StARS, I joined college, graduated from there, and have started doing pastoral work.” In 2014, Amal completed coursework in Pastoral Ministry / General Ministry at the Petrescue Institute in Cairo. She now leads a weekly group of women on a voluntary basis.

Amal continues, “I became someone who gives support. I talk to women who have the same problems as I did. I rent an apartment and live there with my family and also use the apartment for meetings with women… I am very happy for that, because I am doing good things. The women have improved and progressed.”

“While in the psychosocial program, I was not well. I was thinking of suicide… I was always blaming myself, that I was the reason for all of this,” she says. “But now, I think how we are always together, one family full of hope, tomorrow will be better than today. This is the difference between our family earlier and now. We conquered all that difficulty.”

Amal and her family continue to face challenges. It is difficult to cover the needs of her children on her salary, and there was a fire in her apartment earlier this year. But Amal maintains her positive outlook and looks towards the future and to giving back. She wants to help other refugees who have lost family, to work with women in situations similar to what she experienced.

For refugees in Cairo where life can often seem hopeless, Amal’s words shed light: “Really, I am very happy. I don’t know how to describe my happiness. My kids and I have been helped…I hope to offer to others what they offered me. Frankly, I am thankful for everything here.”

* Name changed as a precaution due to general protection concerns for refugees living in Cairo.

Storyteller: Amal