By SARA ROSS, THE PACKET AND TIMES
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
The average income in Cambodia is just $1 a day, making education essential to escaping poverty.
A strong desire to change the lives of poverty-stricken children led Orillia's Kristiana Edmar to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
"Here, we take education so for granted and there, they are hungering for it," she said. "Here, the government will help you, or there are so many other options, but their education is all they have."
The 20-year-old spent eight months in Cambodia teaching at the North Country Baptist Children's Home, which was opened by local pastor Len Crow in 2007.
She re t u r n e d home several days ago.
The orphanage is home to 24 children aged three to 14.
Edmar taught English to six children during her time there.
Each child in the home has escaped a sad background to get to the orphanage. Two girls were saved from the sex trade, several were living on large garage heaps hoping for scraps of food or sellable treasures, while some were abandoned by parents who just couldn't afford them. Others are true orphans.
"It's heartbreaking for the parents to give them up and see they had to give them up for them to have an education, for them to have a future," Edmar said.
"A lot of people want to learn, but there's just no opportunity for them to learn."
Each Sunday, some parents who are still alive arrive at the church to check in with their child.
"Every Sunday school we give (the children) a little bag of crackers and they would save it for their parents," Edmar said. "You would see them giving it to their moms and dads ...they knew they had lunch coming; the parents may not."
When two of the boys housed at the orphanage became of age to work, the parents took them back, Edmar said.
"Now, they each earn 50 cents a day," she said. "So for a dollar a day extra for the family they don't have proper food, they don't have an education."
The goal of the North Country Baptist Children's Home is that children gain enough education to obtain real careers in their community, Edmar said.
"What we really want them to do is work in their community so if they have a doctor's degree we want them to work in a hospital there to benefit and educate the rest," she said.
Crow, who leads the North Country Baptist Church in Orillia, said Edmar had a strong impact in Cambodia.
"She has done a tremendous job. My wife went there to pick her up and for the first time, my wife could converse with the children in English," Crow said. "This is revolutionary for us because it has always been a barrier; we always had an interpreter, so it's a real blessing."
Edmar plans on attending university and then going back to the orphanage to teach again. She hopes to one day end up as a teacher in Cambodia or Vietnam.
"It's changed my life not only in head knowledge, but in my heart and my outlook on life," Edmar said.
"It was a real eye-opener of how blessed we are in Canada."
sross@orilliapacket.com
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