Mr. Heng Thona (Khmer: ហេង ថុនា) was born on August 15, 1980 in Phnom Touch Village, Sophy Commune, Baty District, Takeo province, Cambodia. He was successfully achieved his goal with the effort he made. He helped many families relieving from domestic violence and poverty family in Cambodia.
Historically, his life seemed so pity like others living near his home. Away from crowed town and city, Phnom Touch village is the place where he was born on the earth. From time to time and from day to day, his thoughts envisioned a better life in the future, but the thing was that what he could do from that time. No information, no guideline, most of people in that village had no intention to send their children to school rather than to have their children to do farm as a solely business. Fortunately, he traversed many meaningful experiences in memories as he’d like to tell more.
Originally, he was a poor child from Phnom Touch village, Sophy commune, Baty district, Takeo province, where people always looked down on him when his parents were not home. he was a spoiled child, but he would like to try something new and creative. As in the school record in the third grade class, I got the first score every month in mathematics when he was 7 years old. In the fourth grade, he failed the exam two years because of some problems in family. Domestic violence was happened to his family all the day. His father used to beat his mother badly when he got angry or threw food away if food was not delicious. They were frequently arguing when having no enough food to eat or misunderstanding.
Encouragingly, my mother was, he remembered, working very hard in the rice field from morning till night. After the field, she came back home, she had to prepare food to be ready for family. One day, she might be late to prepare or have tasteless food his father shouted loudly, beat her badly, and then threw all food away. During that time he was too young to help his mother besides crying and running away to avoid fighting. Who could help him and his family? No one could help. His neighbors were afraid of his father because his father had ever said “please don’t care about my family, this is my family issues.” As a bitter memory, Mr. Thona had tried all his utmost to do farm and harvest rice crop mentally and physically in order to help his mother’s work and another thing he had made an effort to study very hard to be excellent.
Embarking on the new life, he stepped toward the high school when he was 17 years old. In that time, he could earn some money by taking photos of the wedding ceremonies and planting vegetable. His family crisis went better. His family had reduced some domestic violent problems. Notably, because of poverty and illiteracy, domestic violence was always happened in his family.
In year 2000, he passed the exam from high school and was going to study in university, but unfortunately his family and he didn’t have enough money to support his study, so that he decided to find a job to earn his living and save some money for studying. Mr. Thona had changed many jobs from 2001 to 2004 as he’s ever worked in supermarket, company, restaurant, shops, and association. All of these work, he had earned very little money because of small pay. However, he could pay half amount of his study in university and the half would be paid later.
To see a difficult and busy work in company and restaurant, but less pay, he tried to get a job in non-government organization where he will, he hope, get higher salary. Unluckily, he could not get a job because he had no experiences with organization at all. Thus, the first thing he could do was to be a volunteer and then learnt more work of organization. After the three-month period of volunteer, he was dropped out of his work and got the new one which he got pay $120 per month. With this amount of money, he can continue supporting his study in university and live independently with taking small amount from his parents. Today, he has completed a bachelor degree of Business Administration in the field of Accounting and Finance and he wishes to continue his graduate degree provided by full scholarship as he hopes to extend his knowledge and experience more professional. [1]
For years later, he has been working with non-government organization as his wish such Women's Media Centre of Cambodia [2], HIV/AIDS Coordinating Committee [3]