VIN VICHARA

I was born into extreme poverty in Tapang Village, Siem Reap Province. When I was five, my family moved to Thailand to work, and for three years I had no opportunity to attend school-instead, I cared for my baby sister while my parents worked. My mother taught me basic Khmer letters and numbers whenever she could. When my parents realized I would never get an education in Thailand, they sent me back to Cambodia to live with my widowed aunt. I woke at 4 a.m. every day to help her sell vegetables at the market, never experiencing a normal childhood, but learning independence and how to survive.
Eventually I returned to live alone in my parents’ cottage, working and studying simultaneously, determined that education was my only path out of poverty. When I graduated high school with grade A, I was briefly overjoyed-then devastated because I had no money for university. When Global Children Cambodia offered me a scholarship to study Medicine in Phnom Penh, I couldn’t believe a poor girl like me could receive such an opportunity. I am deeply grateful to Laura Smith and will invest everything in my education so I can help other children in my village and throughout Cambodia.