May 2015

167 318

CHARITY
167 May15
Hope
When nurse Marie Cammal
left Paris in 1981 and
headed to a Laotian
refugee camp in Thailand,
she could never have imagined that
three decades later she would be
spearheading two projects to help
vulnerable girls complete their secondary
schooling in the remote north of Laos. In
the intervening years, this compassionate
and gutsy Frenchwoman worked in
refugee camps across Thailand, Hong
Kong, Singapore and Cambodia, before
settling in Phnom Penh in the early 90s.
There she established a private shelter
for desperately poor and defenceless
children in need of healthcare, education
and tender loving care.
Louang Nantha, Laos
While Cambodia’s grinding poverty
is well documented, the situation is
different in Laos, and so the country
lags even further behind. A third of the
population of the landlocked country
lives below the poverty line, according
to the United Nations Development
Program, while UNICEF estimates that
over a third of women aged 20 to 24
were first married (or in union) by the
age of 18.
Marie is painfully aware of these
gloomy statistics, and through her
work hopes to improve the lives of girls
– indeed, of entire communities – in
remote areas of 2014, 33 female
students of the Akha indigenous hill
tribe in the mountainous northwestern
Long district received scholarships in
partnership with Norway Church Aid
(NCA) to attend secondary school
from Grade 6 to 12. It was a first for
the minority group. Marie says: “In very
poor families only the boys are sent to
school. Girls become child labourers
for their parents, carrying loads of
wood for distances as long as 30km, or
rising at 5am to look after crops, often
on an empty stomach and in freezing
temperatures. They are susceptible to
abuse, violence and exploitation.”
Ray of
It’s a rare opportunity to meet someone as courageous as MARIE
CAMMAL, founder of the Sok Sabay Organisation, whose deeds
shine as beacons of optimism in the face of mankind’s violence
and abject suffering. Marie travelled to Singapore from her home in
Cambodia recently, and along the way inspired Katie Roberts with
her confidence for the future of the Cambodian and Laotian children
she has spent years caring for.
images by Marie Cammal
Marie in Laos nursing
a Khmong baby