The owner of Outback Trading Co. in Felton recently returned from Cambodia where she found a new passion in life — helping several nongovernment relief organizations.
Clare Campbell spent a month during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in Siem Reap, near the temples of Angkor Wat, as a teacher and volunteer after traveling to the Third World far-eastern country.
“I was feeling like I had this calling,” Campbell said. “I knew about Angkor Wat; I had seen the photos, and I had an urge to go there.”
Campbell, who said she supports a fatherless Cambodian family each month for the cost of keeping a horse, knew she wanted to volunteer, but she was not able to connect with a group before leaving.
“I trusted that once I went there, the right one would appear, and that’s what happened,” she said.
While riding a bicycle to the temples one day, she began speaking with a local boy, who told her his Australian teacher was leaving that day to go back to Australia. He took her to New Hope Cambodia, an educational center and clinic founded in 2007 that is dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty in Cambodia.
For two weeks, Campbell volunteered as an assistant teacher at the school, mostly teaching English and math to a class of 30 children from 6 to 10 years old.
“There’s a pureness and innocence about the people,” Campbell said. “There’s something when you come to Cambodia that’s so special about the people.”
Education, Campbell said, is one of the largest needs in Cambodia — a country that is still recovering from genocide. Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge soldiers killed 1.7 million Cambodians, leaving political upheaval and a lack of education in the country.
“In the war, they killed everyone who was educated, and it left a whole generation of kids uneducated,” Campbell said.
That absence of formal education has now been passed down to a second generation, sometimes leading young boys and girls into the sex trade and child labor.
Campbell, whose passion is clothing, also took patterns with her — a halter-top dress and a skirt — and began teaching women in the school to sew garments from the patterns using local cloth. She brought some of their work back to her store in Felton to sell and will send the proceeds to the school.
In addition, Campbell is planning a springtime fundraiser to benefit the school.
She’s also supporting two other nongovernment organizations in Cambodia, Kids Care Cambodia and Jimmy’s Village School. Both work to educate young people in trades and in traditional subjects.
“They are so grateful and eager to learn,” Campbell said, “and grateful to any volunteer that came to help them in class. It was so heartwarming.”
Campbell said she would help anyone who was interested in traveling to Cambodia. She plans to return with her son Luka in December.
For information: www.newhopecambodia.com; or search “Kids Care Cambodia” and “Jimmy’s Village School” online.
