Help Give Cambodian Young Adults Independence

This quarter’s update is coming directly from the grassroots – I have asked one of the young adults in the program to tell you in his own words about a day in his life – I have not edited his text in anyway, so hope you find the grammar charming rather than annoying. By way of background for you, Bota is a 19 year old boy who has quite recently moved from the big “family” of Sangkheum Centre into the communal house that the young adults live in for the first two years of their independent living. This is a transitional home for them where they learn to stand on their own two feet but safe in the knowledge that the experienced adults/carers of Sangkheum are never far away. Bota is one of five brothers who have all grown up at Sangkheum. His older brother Lita is in fact one of the first “graduates” from the Young Adult Pilot Program and is now carving out a career at one of the local hotels. Bota is an energetic young man, very keen on football and has taken coaching courses so he can now run football training sessions for the younger kids (boys and girls) back at the Centre. Bota was also instrumental is galvanizing interest and maintaining motivation for his fellow young adults to enter the annual Angkor Bike Ride, a 30 km race around the glorious temples of Siem Reap. As previously reported (Update November 2009) the young adults were so enthused by simply having a goal and something to aim for; something a lot of us take for granted. They are all keen and eager to beat last year’s time and I am personally looking forward to joining them for this year’s race in December. Bota, will continue to attend high school until he has passed his final year 12 grades which are likely to be in his early 20s. Like most Cambodia children Bota started his education later than Western children but he is one of the luckier ones as he should get to finish his schooling as a member of the Young Adult Program. Bota is currently gaining work experience with a local travel agency performing admin and computer tasks – as you can tell from his diary below, he really loves it. HOPE supports the Young Adult Program which funds the housing and accommodation costs, food, travel and other living expenses as well meets the cost of extra curriculum education such as English classes and IT training. With your support we are able to help Bota, his younger brothers and friends create a better long term future for themselves. THANK YOU “A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BOTA" _______________________________________________________________________ So right now, I want to tell you something about my habit and my job. I always got up at 6:00 early in the morning before I the sunrise and helped my friends to clean my wonderful house. After that I took a shower, brush my teeth, com my hair, gat dress, and then I cook food for breakfast and eat with young adults Integration group and also for my young teacher as well. At morning before lunch I watched TV and read a book about tourist in Siem Reap and about Khmer subject at school and Khmer culture and review some lesson for Paññãsãstra University of Cambodia, Siem Reap. At 10:00 in the morning on Monday my friend Ann and I cook food for my group and another day my young adults group cook for me and another friends that live together. After lunch I took a nap and I took a bath and went to work. I started at 2:00 in the afternoon, but I always there before the time every days. When I get there I prepare myself, then I work on comparison all about the hotels and guesthouse in Siem Reap, Province. My manager Dayvy allowed me to do only the comparison by myself for her every weekend and she has 5 website for me to check like: Agoda Company, Booking com, Asia Travel Company, Direct Room, and the last one are Expedia. I could knew how the different room rate from other website and we took all website to compare with our web to do comparison, so we knew how much all room rate cost and if we knew we could make our room rate that cost nearly the same. I had to do one comparison for a week and four times a month. When I finished my work I send it to my manager Dayvy and Ms. Jo. After that at 5:00 o’clock in the evening, I leaved from work and I went to study at Paññãsãstra University of Cambodia at 6:00pm and I didn’t eat supper yet. At PUC I study only English subject and I finished at 7:00pm. Finally I went home and get dinner then went to sleep. Right now, we have a new wonderful important website for our company to update things that we need to know such as to prepare the room rate, travel information, Siem Reap map, the weather, the photos gallery and hotels review and other things that we would to know. I want to know all programs in our website clearly that we have. If I know all information in our website I could check about everything that I want to know or it easy to explain some of the guests when they asking me about our company. I really want to go to the hotels or guesthouse that we have the in the website, because it‘s very useful for me and for our company, Because I want to know some news information like the hotels and guesthouse. Then we can make friendship and make a good communicate each other.