A Change of Guard

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Friday 23 December 2011

[Long Beach's] YMCA Gives Back To Cambodia

Posted: Thursday, December 22, 2011
By Stephanie Minasian
The Long Beach Gazette
Staff Writer

Last month, Ron Ung joined five of his colleagues from the YMCA of Greater Long Beach Community Development group and ventured to Cambodia, where they were able to assist and teach marketable skills to young Khmer people.

The group has been working on a service learning cultural exchange for the last three years, and decided to send six Cambodian-American employees overseas to learn about their own roots, in addition to teaching skills to Khmer youth.

“We have about 25 Cambodian-Americans on our staff,” said Bob Cabeza, who is the vice president of the YMCA of Greater Long Beach. “Six of my professional staff members have been working in-depth with the Cambodian community through schools… Many Cambodian-Americans have a disconnect with the culture, and we thought this could be a way to help understand what Cambodia is like, such as art and culture, because many families don’t talk about it.”

Ung, who works as the logistics director for the YMCA of Greater Long Beach, is of Cambodian decent, and said he never had much of a desire to visit the country where his family came from because of its troubled history.

“I grew up hearing stories from my parents and what they went through during the genocide,” he said. “They lost a lot of family members. I read about news growing up, and was never interested in going.”

In Cambodia, the group from Long Beach provided a day camp for 100 street kids at the YMCA Street Children’s School — which they described as a small shack on stilts, overlooking sewage, train tracks and filth.

The street children who come to the school do not attend a state school, according to Cabeza, who said they come to receive one hot meal for the day. The group donated food, school and sports supplies to the street children.

“I saw a lot of hope, a lot of opportunity for these young Cambodian staff members and kids we worked for,” said YMCA employee Michael Oun, who is finishing his degree in aerospace engineering at California State University, Long Beach. “We hear stories from our parents about Cambodia, but to actually be there, and to learn in that environment made it an emotional trip.”

The six staff members also spent five days teaching digital media and leadership skills to 30 young Cambodians, which gave them the abilities to be more marketable when applying for jobs.

“They are really bright people,” Oun said. “For us to come in and teach them technology as a skill for them, was a very collective experience.”

The Cambodian youth learned how to use Facebook to their professional advantage, as well as media arts programs on computers, Oun added.

“We wanted to teach young Cambodians to develop a digital media art studio around a creative context,” Cabeza said. “One of things that happens is that these kids get out of school, but there are no jobs. They need economic opportunities.”

Cabeza added that the group had a filmmaker document their journeys, and are looking to submit the finished film to festivals and Cambodian community showings across the United States.

“The biggest thing I want to let the youth in Cambodia know is that they are not forgotten,” Ung said.

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