Changing the World, One Girl at A Time

In Cambodia, just 32% of children attend high school. Only 1/3 of these are girls. In this poor, largely subsistence farming economy, most girls don’t go to high school because they’re hard at work — laboring in rice fields, serving as domestic maids or, most distressingly, being forced into the illegal sex trade.

Room to Read, an international nonprofit based in San Francisco, is working to change this. They provide comprehensive high school scholarships to girls in need. They also build libraries and publish beautifully illustrated children’s books in the local language of Khmer.

When we traveled through Cambodia, we quickly fell in love with the children we met, who greeted us with enormous smiles and excited shouts of “hello.” We were excited to partner with Room to Read to take photographs for their annual yearbook and to meet a few of the girls in their program.

With local Room to Read staff, we headed to Kampong Cham province, a two-hour drive from Phnom Penh. We stopped on the side of the road and walked into a rice field. There we met Lisang, a high school scholarship student who was busily harvesting rice with women twice her age. To help support her ailing parents and two younger siblings, Lisang works in the rice fields from 6 am — 12 pm before going to class in the afternoon. On weekends, she performs this back-breaking work full-time. After school, she cooks and cleans at home. Somehow, she manages to squeeze in time for homework, too.

Smart, funny and quietly confident, Lisang instantly charmed us. She good-naturedly let us follow her around for a day as she went from the rice fields to her one-room home that she shares with her family to school.

Her English teacher joined us, and he told me Lisang had a maturity far beyond her age. She had to drop out of school for a year to work as a domestic maid, but she’s returned with Room to Read’s help. Now, she’s determined to succeed.

At Lisang’s home, her family welcomed us warmly, and it was an honor to visit. But it was also sad. When we asked Lisang if she had any favorite toys or dresses that we could photograph (per a request from Room to Read), she simply shook her head, no. A child with the responsibilities of a working adult, Lisang had nothing special of her own. But she thought for a moment, and then she led us outside. With a shy smile, she pointed to her favorite thing: a bright yellow flower that she had planted in front of her house.

Later, Lisang showed us around her school and gave us a tour of the Room to Read library. Since we’d been pointing our cameras at her for hours, Jeremy asked her if she’d like to be the photographer. After a pause, she nodded eagerly. I looped my Canon around her neck and showed her how to press the shutter and use the zoom. She studied the room through the camera lens, focused on a Room to Read plaque on the wall and took a shot. After a glance at the digital display to see her image, she grinned broadly. Then, she wandered around the room photographing her classmates. She was a natural. I couldn’t stop smiling as I watched her.

We’ve thought about Lisang a lot since we met her. Her intelligence, dedication to family, unbelievable work ethic and cheerful spirit inspired us. It’s clear she could achieve anything she wanted if given the opportunity. But she and her family are trapped in the devastating quicksand of poverty, and it poses a major roadblock to her future.

Hopefully, with the help of Room to Read, she’ll find an escape route through education. Who knows, perhaps she’ll become a photographer one day.

Click here to see a photo gallery of our day with Lisang.