Humanitarian builds schools in Cambodia so a new generation will become ‘movers and shakers’
At Angkor Village in northern Cambodia, kids welcome visitors at a school built by humanitarian Bernie Krisher.
Photograph by: Michael Mccarthy
The entire class stands and bows as I enter the room. Here in northern Cambodia, still recovering from a genocidal civil war decades ago, good manners are important. So is a good education. Bernie Krisher would be the first to tell you that.
Although he lives in Tokyo, I first met him in San Francisco, while he was on a fundraising mission to benefit his projects in Asia. The retired journalist has personally built almost 600 schools in remote regions of impoverished Cambodia.
His new project, Bright Future Kids, explains his motivation.
“The idea is,” says Krisher, “even for children living in extreme poverty, the sky is the limit if they’re ambitious.”
Krisher was born in Germany and escaped to America in 1942 as millions of Jews were exterminated in the Second World War. He started delivering newspapers at eight, and by age 12 he’d started his own magazine.
Krisher became bureau chief in Asia for Newsweek during the Vietnam War, and stayed in Asia. He founded Focus magazine in 1981 and later joined Fortune Magazine. His philanthropic goals are even higher.
In 1993, Krisher founded American Assistance for Cambodia, a non-profit organization aimed at giving hope to Cambodians following the extermination of two million citizens during the Khmer Rouge regime. He built Sihanouk Hospital of Hope in the capital of Phnom Penh, which treats the poor for free. He founded and publishes The Cambodia Daily, dedicated to training journalists. In 2008, Krisher founded the Burma Daily.
Although unknown in North America, Bernie’s humanitarian work has become legendary in Asia. In northern Cambodia, scooter-borne “Motomen” zigzagging along dirt roads in the remote countryside. The scooters carry Wi-Fi modems with antennas for uploading and downloading emails for transmission to and from satellite. Designed by Krisher’s friends at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this high-tech wireless Internet system allows remote villages to tap in to the outside world. He’s installed similar systems in buses in India.
“I have a large Rolodex built up from my days as bureau chief of Newsweek,” he say, “and I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Krisher founded Girls Be Ambitious, aimed at encouraging poor farmers to allow their daughters to attend school in return for monthly stipends.
“For the poor, 90 per cent of opportunities are closed,” he says, “but these kids are going to be movers and shakers.”
For more information, visit www.cambodiaschools.com
Contact Michael McCarthy through www.intentional-traveler.com
No comments:
Post a Comment