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Above: Robin Gill introduces this week’s Everyday Hero, Marie Ens.
Former missionary Marie Ens was not ready to stop working when told it was time toretire at age 66. She certainly wasn’t ready to give up on the country where she’d spent a large part of her career and had come to love -– Cambodia.
So when she struck out on her own in 2003, Ens took on a cause that needed much attention: caring for AIDS patients.
“In the early 2000′s AIDS was just rampant in Cambodia,” Ens told Global News on a visit to Vancouver. “At one point three per cent of the population was infected and we just felt like every organization out there should do something. … So that’s why we got involved.”
She started Place of Rescue as a hospice, setting up 16 homes to care for AIDS patients near the capital, Phnom Penh.
“At the time, we had no anti-viral drugs … so they mostly died,” she said. “Well, they all died.”
But with their deaths, the patients who had lived at Place of Rescue left behind children.
“We started out by thinking, well we’llstart an orphanage and maybe in 5 years we would have it up and running,” 80-year-old Ens said. “Well, it happened so quickly. It was just no time before we had 10 houses and then no time before the 10 houses were filled.”
Now there are 20 homes at Place of Rescue, but Ens’ operation expanded to a second and third facility as well.
One of Place of Rescue’s near Phnom Penh.
She said there are now close to 500 youngsters being looked after at these facilities.
“I would love to have 1,000, but as the years slip by I wonder is that really going to happen. … But I would love that” said Ens, who is originally from Yorkton, Sask. “We have come this far in 10 years, so [in] the next 10 or 15 we should get there. … I am planning to live to 95 at least.”
Marie Ens with some of the children from Place of Rescue during a visit to Vancouver.
Global News
Although she’s operating an orphanage, she explained she’s not running any sort of foreign adoption agency.
“One of the goals we have is that our children will grow up to be really emotionally, spiritually, physically healthy,” she said. But Ens also wants them to be able to achieve all of that in their home country.
“There is so much dishonesty and immorality in Cambodia … we want our kids to model something better,” she explained. ”We want them to appreciate the fact that they’re Cambodian.”
Something that is helping to achieve that is the fact that all of the staff at Place of Rescue are Cambodian — including Ens, who now has Cambodian citizenship.
It should also be noted that Cambodian government has not allowed any foreign adoptions since 2009, amid concerns over trafficking and children being adopted despite having living parents in Cambodia. The country is reportedly set to lift that ban in 2014.
Ens’ organization is a registered Canadian charity; she relies on donations from home to keep things running.
“Our budget now has come up to $78,000 a month and that has to come in every month,” she said. “It has been. … We don’t go into debt.”
WATCH: Marie Ens attends a fundraising event in Vancouver, accompanied by some of the children who live at Place of Rescue’s orphanages in Cambodia
It’s not just children she’s caring for these days either. Place for Rescue continues to house people living with AIDS.
But among the people living in the organization’s facilities are grandmothers, left to care for their grandchildren after their parents have died from the disease.
And there’s also a support program for young, unmarried pregnant women whose boyfriends have left them.
Ens and those that work with Place of Rescue, both in Cambodia and here in Canada, have a lot of work cut out for them.
But she said she’s in disbelief at all that she has to live for.
“I can’t believe my life right now. I can’t believe growing old in an Asian country where they value age so much and they’re so respectful,” she said. “And, the love of all those children. There’s nothing you can compare to it.”
She said she’s not in the habit of setting goals and doesn’t know what the future holds for her and her organization, but she knows she wants Place of Rescue to continue growing.
“If there’s a problem and we hear of the problem and somebody comes to us and says there’s a child that needs us, we want to be able to respond,” Ens said. “So, during the next five years, the next 10 years, I hope we continue to grow and take in lots more kids.”
WHAT MAKES AN EVERYDAY HERO?
There are many people trying to make a difference who rarely receive the media attention they deserve. Everyday Hero is our attempt to provide better balance in our newscast. We profile Canadians who don’t go looking for attention, but deserve it. People who through their ideas, effort and dedication are making a difference in the lives of other people.
If you know of an Everyday Hero whose story we should tell, share the information with us by emailing viewers@globalnational.com
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