This Khmer Rouge Survivor Sells Backpacks to Fund New Schools in Cambodia
Huffington Post
This is a story about a man named Koky Saly. A pretty incredible man
with a story that needs to be told. It's a story about overcoming
obstacles, the kinds of which most of us will not even face in this
lifetime.
From 1975-1979 the Khmer Rouge regime systematically
claimed the lives of 2 million Cambodians in what was one of the worst
mass murders of the 20th century. Millions of people living in
Cambodia's cities were forced to work in the countryside on communal
farms. Entire families were disappeared. Communities were scattered.
They imprisoned, tortured and killed those the Khmer Rouge deemed
educated, targeting some just for wearing glasses. No other regime in
history has so successfully and completely waged war on its country's
education system and human resources.
The Toul Sleng Genocide Museum is housed in a former high school that was converted in to the infamous Security Prison 21 (S-21) for the Khmer Rouge.
Koky
Saly was born in 1976 during the height of the oppressive rule of the
Khmer Rouge. He doesn't remember much from this time and his parents are
reluctant to shed too much light, but a sense of fear still lingers. He
knows he saw dead bodies. He knows he saw torture. He knows he saw
executions.
As an adult he learnt that he was born in Koky Temple,
his namesake. At the time the Buddhist temple had been converted into a
Cambodian prison camp for mothers and pregnant women. Saly spent the
first three years of his life imprisoned behind these walls. At three
years of age his family escaped and subsequently trekked three days and
three nights across jungle and land riddled with land mines to the
Cambodian-Thai border and the safety of a refugee camp.
. . .
After
two months in the camp, his family was relocated to Australia. Saly
grew up in Melbourne, but his connection to the past was always there.
He never forgot the kind acts of strangers that had allowed his family
to survive the war, from the guard in the prison that on occasion gave
his family extra food, to the charity workers that helped them find a
new home. Saly's family survived against the odds and it was this
realization that inspired him to give back to Cambodia and pay those
small acts of kindness forward.
"Beekeeper Parade is just an extension of my spirit. Freedom, happiness, different, finding beauty in the smallest things. And if you know why you're doing something, it is really powerful inside of you."- Koky Saly
Saly, his sister Sophia and some of his closest friends founded Baby Tree Projects in 2007 and to date the organization has helped build five schools in Cambodia. The first of these schools is in Sophy, the village where Saly and his family were imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge. It's poetic justice. It was the school principal and her family in Sophy that saved his family's lives.
Baby Tree Projects is now working with
these schools to improve the lives of the children that attend them. But
Saly acknowledges that providing these children with a good education
is more than just classrooms, pencils, textbooks and good teachers. In a
community deeply scarred by the past there are more pressing issues to
address.
Despite
being too young to remember specifics, Saly has suffered from trauma
brought on by his experiences of war. Through counseling and talking
about his past he and his family have started to heal. Unfortunately
most of Cambodia's population have not been afforded this kind of mental
health support and this has had a significant impact on families,
communities and Cambodian society today.
Through Baby Tree
Projects, Saly is determined to work with the communities and schools to
encourage healing. "I know they're good people. I know they want to
provide a better life for their children. They understand the importance
of education," he explains. Saly has worked hard to build trust and now
believes the next step will be to talk about the issues the communities
face. No easy feat but he has plans. Big wonderful dreamy plans. "We've
got a long way to go, meaningful change doesn't happen in one year or
two years," points out Saly. "It'll be generations and in my case I
believe I'll be working on this for the rest of my life."
Saly realized that he wanted to create a stable source of income for Baby Tree Projects and BeeKeeper Parade
was born. BeeKeeper Parade is a social enterprise that makes backpacks
from recycled materials at a facility in Cambodia. The idea was
conceived in collaboration with his sister Sophia at her hospital
bedside during her battle with cervical cancer. Sophia had been Saly's
greatest cheerleader. "She had the power to unlock super powers in me,"
he shares, "and any challenge that we had to overcome in the world, we
could never ever face unless we worked on it together."
Sophia
sadly passed away in 2012 but in her will she left her brother her car
with strict instructions to sell it and use the money to start BeeKeeper Parade.
While the loss of his sister and best friend has obviously deeply
affected Saly, he is determined to fight on and continue their work. In
2014, Baby Tree Projects opened the Sophia Saly School. The school was
built on a beach, a dream of Sophia's, and will be the first recipient
of an English language program that is funded by sales from Beekeeper
Parade.
Beekeeper Parade
offers a collection of backpacks and iPad covers that are designed to
have a positive impact at every stage of production. Around the world
millions of tonnes of textiles end up in landfill every year and to
address this issue, Beekeeper Parade sources high quality discarded
materials and shirts from Phnom Penh. Manufacturing is done at a
production house in Cambodia, creating jobs and generating income for
local people. Saly is adamant that workers are treated and paid fairly.
Despite
overcoming floods at their production house in Cambodia, sourcing
problems and staffing issues in the first few months of starting
production Saly remains strong, "If you know why you're doing something
it is really powerful inside of you." Saly has integrated the values of
happiness, freedom, difference, humor and finding beauty in the smallest
things into every aspect of what he and his business does. "Beekeeper
Parade is just an extension of my spirit," he says. The values have been
greatly influenced by Saly's past and he passionately lives by them. As
he puts it, "Don't be a shit talker. If you say it, do it and be it."
"I love Harry Potter because he's part of a magical world I think is real. Not magic and shooting potions and stuff, but I feel like even our existence is magical." - Koky Saly
As well as the English language program, Saly plans to use Beekeeper Parade
to fund a solar energy project in the school communities. Students are
currently using dangerous kerosene lamps to study and solar energy would
provide a clean and more efficient solution to this problem, allowing
the children to study for a couple of extra hours every night. Saly
plans to launch both of these initiatives in 2016 and is excited about
their potential impact on the community.
When asked who in the world he would most like to see wearing a BeeKeeper Parade
backpack, Saly laughs and points to Harry Potter. He explains that the
world of Harry Potter reminds him of the magical world he used to
imagine as a child to escape difficult times. "Those bars and those four
walls had nothing on my imagination." And so it appears the future of
his work, Baby Tree Projects and BeeKeeper Parade is pretty limitless,
too.
- By Megan O'Malley, Community Manager
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