Hello! My name is Angkear. I am 25 years old. I just graduated from university this year. I have two sisters and have no brothers. Nowadays, I live only with my mom because both of my sisters got married and moved away from home. My dad left the family since I was a baby. My mom was the only person who took care of me and my sisters. In my family, I am the only one who had the chance to receive higher education. Because of poverty, my oldest sister quit school when she was in sixth grade to take care of me and helped my mother earn money by helping the neighbor harvest rice. Day by day, our lives became worse and worse, which led my second sister to quit school to start earning money for the family, too.

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Growing up in a poor and broken family really has taught me a lot of lessons about life which I couldn’t learn from school and it was an unforgettable lesson for me. This helps me understand the feeling of the poor very easily. I have experienced suffering, sadness, and neglect. Before, I wanted to give up at times because life was so challenging for me, and it was so unfair for me to be born in that situation, but everything has changed since I joined TASSEL.

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I have been working with TASSEL since 2015. Since I started working at this organization, I realized that my life has completely changed. I am loved and cared for by many people, especially by the TASSEL family. Moreover, I have learned even more from life. In addition, I have the chance to be involved with people who are very poor and are suffering. Also, I can directly share my experience and knowledge with my poor Cambodian children and motivate them to have hope although life is so difficult for them. When I was a child, I used to think that maybe my situation was the worst, but that was not true at all. At least I have my responsible mother who never left me and still takes care of me. In contrast, some of my poor students do not even have food to eat, and some children do not even know their parents. Furthermore, most of them are really hopeless. I can feel how they feel about their situations. I am so happy and thankful that TASSEL exists in Cambodia to serve the poor, and I am also happy that I can be a part of this cause.