27 March 2025
Channich Kov: An Entrepreneur in Many RealmsWhen her friends learned that Channich Kov, who studied environmental science at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, took a job at Vital, a bottled water company, they could not help but to see this as hypocrisy. Her response: they need me. More...
20 March 2025
Boramy Sou: A 21st Century CambodianA good teacher knows that a brain is like any other muscle. When you use it, and use it well, it might hurt. Professor Boramy is known at the Royal University of Phnom Penh as being something of a personal trainer for her students, pushing them think critically and exercize their minds. Outside of the university, she challenges the traditional notion of what it is to be a Cambodian woman. This also stretches the minds of people who know her... for the better. More...
14 March 2025
Ramy Chan: When Vision Meets ResilianceWomen in leadership positions in Cambodia are hard to find. Even in the NGO world, where one would think women benefit from organizations’ commitment to equality and justice, few Cambodian women are at the helm. Nonetheless, director of international NGO Youth Resource Development Program (YRDP), Ms. Ramy Chan, has led and sustained a successful youth organization during trying times.
7 March 2025
Raskmy Sopheak: A Teacher and BeyondReturning to the village causes mixed emotions for Raksmy Sopheak - the peacefulness of Cambodia's countryside and the disappointment witnessing so many social problems. She recognizes that she escaped this fate through the small kindnesses of people she met along her life path. Now she is on the paths of many others to do for them what was done for her. More...
A special tribute for
Since coming to the Kingdom, I have witnessed the lives of Cambodian women - the women who faithfully walk to the wat every ស៊ុល day, the ones who serve soup from dawn to dusk, the ones who ride bicycles to the university where they've earned a scholarship, the ones whose baby they hold with one arm and tend the rice with the other, and the ones who drive their motorbikes to offices to do jobs they've fought to earn. For so many, their lives are hard, harder than most.
This is why this year I have chosen to write about a few of these women who I have been honored to know in my time here. Colleagues and friends. Students who I have been fortunate enough to keep tabs on. These are just a few stories of inspiring people. I hope you too will write your own. And maybe be an inspiration for someone else.
"Stories of Women in Cambodia" is a special project hosted within the Sharing and Listening, Cambodia 1975-1979 website, a website I created some time ago to host my students' interviews with their elders about their lives during the Khmer Rouge time.