On a mission: Koky Saly is working to build schools for the children (above) of Cambodia from where he fled to Australia as a child.
To those who knew her, Sophia Saly was the life of the party and the comedian of her large family. She loved her job as a Carlton Football Club events manager.
Cervical cancer killed her, age 29. Visiting her in hospital before she died last year, her brother Koky would distract her from pain by asking what was her ideal place in the world.
A beautiful beach, with turquoise water, she would say. With hammocks, children playing, and loved ones sipping cocktails. She wanted Koky to find the place in her family's native Cambodia and build a school there.
In January, the dream will become reality. Since 2006, Koky and Sophia had built four schools in the impoverished nation that Koky, his parents and seven siblings, the youngest nine months, fled for their lives from in 1980. (Sophia was born in Melbourne).
Mr Saly says today many Cambodian rural schools, if they exist, are flimsily built, with no toilets or running water. Many teachers aren't paid and don't turn up.
The Cambodian government has found Mr Saly land for his fifth school in Kep province, on the south coast, serving 180 children of salt farmers and fishers. It will be called the Sophia Saly School.
Like the other four schools it will be made of brick, have a well, modern toilets, a food program and paid teachers. In January Mr Saly and a team of volunteers, each paying at least $2000, will help locals build the school.
It's near a beach with turquoise water. Mr Saly plans to build an outpost of the school on the foreshore and scatter Sophia's ashes there on August 15, the second anniversary of her death.
On November 24 at Princes Park, Mr Saly's charity, BabyTree Projects, is staging the Sophia Saly Walkathon, entry fee $20, to raise money for the new school, and to help run all the schools.
Mr Saly, manager of the Melbourne fair trade clothing company Etiko, is motivated by his family's own extraordinary story.
In 1975, his father, Deoun, was a translator at the Angkor Wat temple in central Cambodia and he and his wife, Meas, and then-six children lived in Siem Reap city.
When the Khmer Rouge swept to power, intent on annihilating the bourgeoisie, Deoun was sent to a farm camp, avoiding execution by posing as an uneducated farmer. The Khmer Rouge executed 12 of Deoun's 15 siblings.
Deoun and Meas' oldest daughter, Bavy, 13, looked after the children while their mother was imprisoned for four years in Koky temple.
In 1979, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, and somehow the Saly family reunited and fled to Thailand. After two months in a refugee camp, they flew to Melbourne.
The Glenroy Catholic parish, Corpus Christi, arranged housing, food, clothes, English lessons, school enrolment and a factory job for Deoun.
Koky never forgot the kindness of strangers. He's building the schools so other children have the opportunities he had and to honour Sophia's memory.
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