Tan Uching, is male, eight years old, and Ya Ratha is male, 11 years old, living with their grandparents, aunts and uncles in Bak Chenhchien village, Trapaing Kong commune, Samraong Tong district, Kampong Speu province. The grandmother stays home to do the housework and doesn’t do anything for living because she has chronic diseases. She is just busy with the treatment of her illness. Their aunts and uncles work for garment factories. They have to leave home for work early morning and return home in the evening. Their grandfather works as security guard.

Currently, Uching learns at grade 2 and Ya Ratha learns at grade 4 of Khmer Association for Development in Trakiet village. They are obedient, courteous, smart students. They are the best students in the class. They receive the best study results. At school, they help do some small work like class sweeping and trash collection to keep surrounding environment clean. At home, they do their homework given by the teacher, read and write the lessons on their own. Normally, they finish all their school work until 9:00 P.M. and then they go to bed. There isn’t anybody helping control or encourage their self-learning. In addition, they also help their grandmother with some housework such as house sweeping, cow dung collection, water pumping (by hand), etc. In the morning, they prepare themselves for school. They eat leftover rice as their breakfast before going to school because their grandmother doesn’t give them any money. The grandmother only gives them three pieces of cake that they bring to school. At school they sell their cake to the classmates to get money to other things. Living with their grandparents, aunts and uncles, they aren’t given good care, for instance, they never have enough nutritious food; when sick nobody sends them to hospital; they have to prepare themselves for school. They don’t have enough school materials, uniforms, clothes because nobody supplies them, but however they want to complete all levels of education and to find a good job with high pay to support the family, especially to feed their grandparents.

Uching and Ratha’s parents were divorced and they both have left the family for years. The divorce happened because of domestic violence. Their father always caused the violence against the family, especially their mother that made her unable to stand with him any longer. The children said that one day his father beat the mother that made her furious and decided to divorce him. In the past, although their mother went to work in another province, she still sent some money to her sons so that they could buy food, clothes, school materials, health care, etc. but over the last few months, she stopped sending it to the family and nobody knows where she is living now. As for his father, since he left the family for about five years, he never cares about his two children. The two boys said that living with the parents made them feel bored and lonely, so they wanted their parents to come back and live together with happiness. They added that upon hearing that other children had the parents and called mum, mum, dad, dad, they felt very sad.