My name is Sokun. I am a Head Teacher at Reach. I was born in a very rural village, Chikreng District, which is about 50 kms from Siem Reap town. My parents were farmers with five children, and I am the fourth child. Sadly, when I was 8 years old, my mum passed away and my dad remarried.
My family were extremely poor, but still my dad tried his best to get four of us to finish university. However, because we needed an income, my eldest brother had to help my dad farm and look after my siblings as my mother had passed away.
Although it was almost 20 years ago, I still remember to this day how hard we worked to get an education. We went to the local government school, but we were really struggling with school materials. We had no bike to travel to school, no shoes and no books- all things that were essential for us to study. On the way to school, my dad always gave us vegetables for us to sell to the villagers to get some money so that we could afford to study.
When my second brother got a job in 2010, he tried to support me to move out of the village to study in Siem Reap. I was really lucky because I got the chance to continue to study at university in 2012. I chose to study teaching English as a second language.
In my first year at university, I was a part time teacher for about 6 months. After that I needed to change to a full-time job to support my university’s fees, so I worked as a teaching Assistant, as a teacher, a head teacher and as assistant to foreign language program director. During this time, it was a busy life, working the full day, studying at university and helping my brother to look after the children.
Life in university was exciting but also challenging. I was not smart, but I studied hard which paid off as I was awarded the “outstanding student” for 3 consecutive years on my course. I finished my bachelor’s degree in 2016 at Build Bright University.
I worked for four years at my previous workplace at an international private school, and I learnt a lot about different work and experiences. At the end of 2019, my baby and I had health problems and I had to stop working. After 5 months, due to financial problems, I was looking for work and I knew about REACH from one of my friends.
I decided to work at REACH because REACH is an NGO, which helps kids to study and help families to improve their situations. Another reason is I want to share and teach children from poor families. What amazes me here is how I can see the difference between working with educated parents who understand education and now working with illiterate parents who we need to help and show them how important education is. I love to see all of them learn, grow to become good students and good people with a better future.
I have been working here since school started and I have fallen in love with the children’s smiling faces every day. I am so lucky to work here as I don’t just work but I also learn and grow a lot. Now, I have the best chance to further my education as I got the scholarship for Master Degree of Education. I can’t wait to see our students learn and grow with a good future.
