Plucked From Garbage Scavenging, a Girl Makes Good

Today Chen Sokha, 16, is a student at a prestigious international school and has even been named one of Newsweek magazine’s top 150 women. (Photo: by Pich Samnang)

Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Pich Samnang
VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

“When my father died, I lost everything: my education, my struggling spirit and my parental love and even the love from my siblings because I had to go away and live with others.”

When Chen Sokha was a young girl, she found herself, through circumstance and bad luck, an orphan, and a scavenger at Phnom Penh’s notorious Stung Meanchey dump. Things went poorly from Day One.

“While I was scavenging on the side of the trash hill, a bulldozer pushed the trash down and the trash covered one of my legs,” she said in a recent interview, recalling the day years before. “I was so terrified that I tried to get out and run away, but one of my friends got covered up and killed there; I still remember the incident. ”

Those days are behind her now. Today Chen Sokha, 16, is a student at a prestigious international school and has even been named one of Newsweek magazine’s top 150 women. She’s an accomplished student and an aspiring dancer. She’s been featured in a documentary of inspiring girls around the world and has even met with US First Lady Michelle Obama.

“I was so proud of her as she was a strong and powerful woman,” Chen Sokha said, sitting in a clean school uniform at A New Day Cambodia, an NGO that helps young garbage scavengers leave the dump and go to school. She met the first lady on a sponsored trip to the US last year. “Meeting her made me feel like I wanted to be the same as her,” Chen Sokha said.

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