Story of Soeun Sotheara


Soeun Sotheara is female, 6 years old living with her parents and a 21 year-old elder brother in Tuol Samang village, Vor Sar commune, Samraong Tong district, Kampong Speu province. She has been handicapped in three fingers such as index finger, middle finger and ring finer that were mutilated by sewing machine with which she tampered when she was young.

Sotheara is a good child who obeys the parents, teachers and other and pays attention to her study. At home she like reading the books and helping her mother with little housework such as washing, washing-up and house sweeping. At school she can read and write as other children can and like to have many friends. She pays much attention to her study and always has enough school materials and even maintains them in good order, so her study result is good. She and other children alike like both playing and learning, but she is smart. Learning at KAD school makes her happy, but sometimes she said that she missed her parents because of full day stay in KAD center. She has enough food to eat and proper clothes to wear and is given good care by her grandmother, lives in a proper house and she is always kept hygienic and clean. At home her parents always help teach her because they want her to have high knowledge. When growing up, she intends to be a doctor because she can earn much money to feed her parents, so she said that she would try to learn to become the best student in the class and that nowadays she pitied her parents because they worked hard to get money to support her school.

Sotheara’s father is Sum Reaksa, 39 years old working as a driver driving the garment factory workers to and fro. Her mother is Sam Sokheim, 38 years old working as a chef for Koreans. They alike other garment factory workers have to work all day leaving home early and returning home late, so they don’t have enough to look after their children attentively, but they have a grandmother staying home to do it instead. Normally, her mother cooks food, does both washing and washing up and buys clothes, school materials and uniforms. In addition, at night time, both father and mother help teach her or urge us to learn by herself, especially to complete homework given by the teacher because they want their daughter to learn up to the university level.