My name is Sean Sey. I have 4 siblings including me, and I am the only one of my siblings who has graduated grade 12. Before being able to do this, I am one of the people that used to drop out of school. When I was young, I felt like an orphan, because I was far away from my parents and had to live with my grandparents, because my parents got divorced when I was young. During that time, I just follow my grandparent to live in another province, we had to live far away from my mom, and at that time I was just 8 or 9 years old, and I was studying in grade 1, So I restarted in grade 1 again in another province until grade 4, and then I stopped my studying again because my grandparent can’t support me anymore, so I start to do the work to find money. The time that I remembered the most it’s maybe when I was 13 or 14 years old.

Unfortunately, in 2014 my grandmother that lived with my mom died, and then my mom called me to go to the ceremony. In that day my mom allowed me to become a monk to thank my grandmother. I think that it was a great time, when I lived with my mom, I felt warm and peaceful in my life. But after I finished the ceremony. I was still far away from my mom, because I lived at the pagoda and I left the pagoda near my hometown to go to study at SvayRomeat Pagoda (north of the airport). I lived with other monks, and I restarted my studying again from grade 1 until grade 6. After that in 2016, I went to study at Siem Reap City in grade 7 at Rajabo Buddhist High School until I finished grade 12 in 2021. 

Before, I was an intern from JWOC for the NGO REACH Siem Reap, but now I am a staff of REACH Siem Reap, and I am also really happy to be at REACH, whilst interning at this NGO for the past 6 months, I have learnt how to improve my communication skills, work better in a team, fix a bicycle and mountain bike and support their students in the REACH Repair Shop program. I have had the opportunity to lead this class by being a quick learner and enthusiastic student myself and then with the knowledge and proper skills inside the REACH Repair Shop, it has given me the opportunity to see this side of the shop and empower and motivate my team members and students in general.  

In the future, I want to be an English teacher, because it’s my dream, I will never give up on it. I am a person who likes to share knowledge with other people and hope that the knowledge I have, will inspire others in my community with lots of children who drop out of the school to never give up on their dream and to work hard. I also want to be the person that always waits for the other person that drops out of school easily, to encourage them to continue to study even if they have a lot of problems, that we must not stop studying. For example, like me. No matter the obstacles that I had in my life, I never gave up on my journey. I always fall, but I always encourage myself to study. On the other hand, in the future, if I have the opportunity to study at university, I will do my best to succeed in my dream, and I will share what I have learned with my community to know about the value of studying.