My name is Seangheng, and I am 21 years old. I was born in Varin district, a rural area in Siem Reap Province. My parents and I moved to Battambang when I was a kid and moved back to Siem Reap due to our family’s poor living conditions. I am the oldest child among three siblings. My parents are farmers; they spend most of their time working in the field. They earn a small amount of money from selling rice, corn, watermelon, and cassava. They are so supportive and always motivate me and believe in what I choose to learn and do.
In 2019, I completed Varin high school, but my family didn’t have any income to support me to study at university. Fortunately, an organisation called PEPY came to our school to recruit students into their scholarship program, and I got selected through the three steps of recruiting. However, I had to move from my hometown to learn English, computer skills, and soft skills for one year at PEPY’s Learning Centre, in Siem Reap city with the other 30 scholarship students from different districts.
In April 2020, I started learning English in preparation for my degree at Panhasastra university. It took me 1 and a half years to complete the course, to make sure I will be able to do well when I started my first year at university. Now, I am learning TESOL (Teaching English to Speaker of Other Language). I also completed a six-month internship teaching youth at Anjali House organization. Also, I joined PEPY’s tutoring and mentoring program to guide 11 juniors to become outstanding students at the university and workplace. Further to this, I got selected to be a youth leader to run a community pay back project which is about “Youth Participation in Social and Economic Policy Decision-Making”.
In short, working as a Youth Leader at REACH Siem Reap is my first full time job. I am very excited to bring positive energy and create an impact for our REACH role models youth. I believe that “a real leader uses every issue, no matter how serious and sensitive, to ensure that at the end of the debate we should emerge stronger and more united than ever before.” – Nelson Mandela’s personal notebook, January 16, 2000.
