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| George, Brother and Best Friends |
George (khmer name Ieng), moved to Thailand as living condition when he was around 7 year-old and survived in many camps, where around 2/3 of the people died. At one point, George remembers, he was given only a single can of tinned fish to last him a whole week. He was very lucky to make it, his parents however weren't as well-fortuned.
After nine years of moving around the countryside from camp to camp, Australia, Canada and America offered refuge to a small number of Cambodians. Georges application was declined and he moved back to Vietnam and last to Phnom Penh. Since George and his family arrived to Phnom Penh, he had worked many jobs and things for supporting his study and family.
George has worked as a teacher for Aziza, teaching the computer class. He is extremely proud of his computer lab. He studies at Aziza so that he can improve his English and get a good job in the IT industry, hopefully overseas. George sleeps in the Aziza School and protects his pride and joy, the computer lab. He has enough money to feed himself, but has no time to earn anything else between University, Teaching IT and learning English at Aziza.
And also George has trained a basic of Photography with OPC, and produced such an amazing Projects relative to Living Standard and Educational at Aziza. He just had one last shoot in Phnom Penh for OPC which educate and spread to the next generation stopping violence. He is not professional though but he feels this is an unique experience he has not learned before.
George's radiant joy and remarkable pride make him a tremendously inspirational person. Like all the students at Aziza, he knows that to dwell in the past will do nothing but destroy his future. As with most Cambodians, he has experienced great loss and many hard times, but he doesn't let it get to him. In a place like Cambodia, you have to give everything if you want to get anything back. George takes nothing for granted, and is always looking forward to the future because he knows that one day, his hard work will get him to where he wants to be. The same can be said for every student in Aziza school.
Perhaps the reason why these unfortunate families all have such high spirits, is because they know that everybody has suffered the same. Everybody is equal. One family cannot complain that they have no food or that their husband has died, because the same can be said for every other person. All that they can do is move on, work hard, and hope for a better future.
Aziza is helping these students achieve exactly that. Thanks to Aziza, the children of Dey Krahom now speak fluent English and are able to get jobs in any foreigner restaurants and hotels. But they don't stop there. Settling for 'good enough' doesn't seem to be an option for these kids. Instead they have great dreams, hopes and ambitions. Doctors, Entrepreneurs, Teachers. This is what they see in themselves and I can see it too.
They say that children are the future. Well, I think Cambodia should have no doubts in handing it over to the students of Aziza.
Articled by: Jack Cooper
