The head of Apogee’s global outreach program, Alexandria Jackson, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, recently traveled to Southeast Asia to meet with a wide variety of NGOS and non-profit organizations in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Alex, who has also traveled to Kenya, India and often to Mexico on behalf of Apogee’s philanthropic arm, says she met “the most incredible, kind, and generous men, women and children” throughout her travels in Southeast Asia. It was on this trip that Alex began Apogee’s relationship with the Orphans and Disabled Arts Association (ODA) in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Home to some of the world’s most famous temples and monuments, including the temple complex, Angkor Wat, Siem Reap is constantly swarmed with tourists from all over the world. While growing tourism in Cambodia is good in many respects, especially in terms of Cambodia’s economy, Alex says, “because many visitors quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of street children, orphans and people living with disabilities they see everywhere in Cambodia, and particularly in Siem Reap, they tend to tune these people out rather than attempt to help.”  Grassroots NGOs like ODA are oftentimes the only organizations providing help and relief to the many hungry, abandoned orphans and street children in Cambodia.

“Unfortunately,” Alex explains, “while Cambodia has made great progress since Pol Pot’s regime of terror that was responsible for the slave labor and systematic executions that killed one forth of Cambodia’s population in the mid to late 1970s, most of the Cambodian population still live with the devastating consequences of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.  I traveled all over Cambodia and every single person I met had a horrific story to tell of how the Khmer Rouge directly affected them or an immediate member of their family.”  Leng, who established ODA with his wife in 2003, recalls seeing his father’s throat being cut right in front of him.  Leng lost contact with his mother and sister and was taken in by his aunt and uncle. 

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Leng managed to work enough to put himself through art school and obtain a five-year fine arts degree.  He began to teach art to very poor children in Siem Reap, which was still a collection of war-torn villages riddled with land mines and a severely malnourished population.  Most of Leng’s students had to walk 3-4 kilometers to attend his classes and, without much food, were often too exhausted to consistently make it to class. The Orphans and Disabled Arts Association was Leng’s solution to this problem.  Leng shares his carving and painting skills with the children he looks after with his wife, Sry On. 

Art not only serves as an escape from the often traumatic backgrounds the orphans have come from but also allows Leng and the children to directly fund the orphanage and their schooling with the money raised from the sale of their artwork. “I visited quite a few orphanages in Siem Reap and what particularly attracted me to ODA were the usable skills the children were learning from Leng,” Alex explains. Apogee has always been interested in funding projects that, once given a push in the right direction, have the potential to sustain themselves. ODA not only takes children off the street but encourages them to practice and create artwork that they can sell to help support themselves while in the home but also when they leave the orphanage.  Quite a few of the children have gone on to art school themselves and have returned to work with the younger children.

Beyond the orphanage, Leng has started three ODA Village English schools in three of the villages in the Kang Tbong Village Commune.  Longtime ODA volunteer, Shirley Hawe, explains “without English language skills there is little hope of employment for the village children in the future.  Leng wishes to help as many children access an improved future as he possibly can.”  Apogee recently installed lighting in the schoolhouses allowing the teachers and students to better see what they are doing and facilitating a much better learning environment.  “We are excited to continue to support ODA in all of the great work they are doing,” Alex says. “I can’t wait to go back and visit again!”