We had the privilege of spending the first half of our time in Siem Reap at the guest house of Ponheary Ly, a lady who was celebrated as one of CNN’s Heroes in 2010 for all that she has done to transform the lives of poor rural children. We learned of her organization through fellow travelers, and decided to volunteer our time and resources at a couple of her foundation’s schools. As the guesthouse also supports the schools, we opted to also stay there. Ponheary is a lady with huge demands on her time, but we were lucky enough to get to spend 6 hours traveling to and from a rural school with her. This is her story.

Like EVERY other Cambodian we have met, Ponheary’s life is mired in the tragedy of the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields. In 1975, when she was 12 years old, she and the rest of her family were thrown out of their home, separated, and she was forced to work at a labor camp in the middle of the country, working 14+ hour days, and surviving on one bowl of watery rice a day. Her father was a teacher, so his chances of survival were practically nil, and in 1977 she watched him being shot, along with thousands of others. 16 other family members were also killed, or died of starvation or disease. When Ponheary was 14 years old she was on the run, and in hiding, when soldiers caught her and accused her of stealing food. They marched her deep into the foods and forced her to dig her own grave.

“The ground was very hard,” she told me. “I only got a few inches down, and then I don’t remember what happened.” The next thing she was aware of was waking up in the shallow pit, covered with dirt.

“I must have fallen unconscious, I must have stopped breathing. The soldiers thought I died, and they buried me.”

When the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979, Ponheary found her mother and six remaining siblings. They returned to Siem Reap, where she sold vegetables in the market. Slowly pulling herself back out of poverty, she started a small shop and then trained as a teacher, winning scholarships to study in both Russia and France. However, she couldn’t make enough money to support her family on her meager teacher’s salary, so in the early 1990’s, just as Angkor Wat was being cleared of mines and opening up to tourists, she qualified as a tour guide.

Here, she saw hundreds of bitterly poor children begging to survive, with no incentive or hope of going to school, as the cost of uniforms was too much for starving families to bear. She started to sponsor some of the children to go to school with her tour guide earnings, and within a year, was supporting 40. In 1995 she guided Lori Carlson from Austin, Texas, who became the second wing that she needed.
Because of what she had seen, and the gentle charisma of Ponheary, Lori went home and set up the Ponheary Ly foundation. In 1998 she moved to Cambodia for good, and together the two women have been the driving force behind the creation of four schools, which now educate 2,500 children. In addition, they provide food to poor rural communities, dormitories for children who cannot make the long journey to school, and technological and college support.

The transformation is incredible.   There is still so much work to do – Ponheary and Lori are still battling the forces of government corruption, rural landmines, and poverty that means that most families in Cambodia still live on less than a dollar a day. Many children still slip though the net, or drop out. However, most children are now in school instead of begging at temples. Her example has inspired many others to do what they can to help break the cycle of poverty.

Ponheary has spoken at UNESCO and to Microsoft, she has met with world leaders

and traveled the world for her cause. However, her focus and her everyday life is all about the children, what they need, what more her foundation can do. During the day we spent with her she brought pancake batter and Nutella out to cook with the older children living in the dormitories, and she made them for each, of us telling jokes and laughing the whole time. She had told me of some of the most terrible things she endured in her life – from witnessing her father’s death to seeing young boys burned alive for trying to catch frogs. However, her focus is entirely on the future, on life, on giving and on working through the horrors of Cambodia’s recent history to giving the completely disfranchised some hope of change.