How Tolyka Saly overcame a troubled past to help kids in need

06 Feb, 2012
The Melbourne Weekly

WHEN Tolyka Saly (pictured) says he feels like he lives three separate lives, he isn’t exaggerating.

The sharply-dressed fashion designer spends his mornings and weekends helping young tennis stars to hone their game. Just a couple of months ago he was rolling up his sleeves to build a secondary school in his home country of Cambodia.

Saly’s brother Koky set up an initiative to build schools in Cambodia almost seven years ago. Baby Tree Projects aims to give children the same opportunities the brothers had growing up in Australia. The name was chosen as a metaphor for helping the country grow, from the roots up.

A small army of volunteers raise money and come together in Cambodia to build new schools. “The volunteers see exactly where all the money is going,” Saly, 38, says. “It’s very liberating and people are amazed at how much they can do to help. Each person discovers certain things about themselves because you live in the village with no power or running water; you have to become like farmers.”

Saly says all the Cambodian children he has encountered say the same thing: they just want to go to school.

“They really want to learn and make a future for themselves,” he says. “They have journeys too; they just don’t have opportunities or someone to help them. They know there is a whole world out there.”

Few of the clients at Saly’s upmarket South Yarra suit store could ever imagine the hardship the well-spoken young man endured in order to flee war-torn Cambodia in the late 1970s.

Saly, his parents and eight siblings were forced to leave home with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, and were one of thousands of families who walked to the Thailand border to escape the Pol Pot regime.

Saly’s older sister died on the journey, the children were separated and his parents were captured and taken to separate concentration camps. Somehow the family managed to reunite and migrate to Australia when Saly was five.

Growing up in the suburb of Broadmeadows, Saly credits his strong family ties and close friends for keeping him on the right path. Following on from his older siblings, Saly first picked up a tennis racquet at age 11 and taught himself to be one of the state’s most promising junior players.

Saly secretly travelled by train to big tournaments around the state because his family didn’t have enough money to support his talent.

“I had to work a lot harder than the other kids,” he says. “But that taught me my philosophy now as a tennis coach: never give up. You have to work hard to get what you want.”

In the same vein as his work for Baby Tree Projects, Saly offers free coaching for underprivileged kids with potential.

“I always thought that if I had someone like myself who took me under their wing, who knows, I could have turned professional,” he reflects.

“But I also see that as a positive because it taught me to be the person that I am.”

Saly’s ultimate dream is to set up a tennis academy in Cambodia and provide scholarships for students to travel to Australia to study and play tennis.

“I’ve always been a simple person and never really needed much,” he says. “Working in Cambodia just makes me appreciate what I have so much more.”