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CLOSE-UP CLASS OF 2011
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Going Back to Give Back The small nation of Cambodia has been caught up in the war in Vietnam, invaded, occupied and has suffered a brutal regime under which 20 percent of its population died—all within living memory of one generation. Refugees escaped when they could, including thousands who settled in Lowell.
Then...
In the fall of 1975, the Riverside parking lot on North Campus wasn’t yet paved—but there was a familiar refrain when it came to finding a spot. As the ’76 yearbook lamented: “Students are just going to have to continue to play hide and seek with the parking spaces … but as you sit in your car cursing everything in sight, just remember you are there with many other students and workers. You can all curse together.”
Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. In rural villages, older women care for grandchildren, living in makeshift huts, while their parents work in cities. Tola N. Sok (front row, center) sees this as a great opportunity to make a difference. “Ever since I was a kid, I had this vision of going back to help my parents’ country in some way,” says Sok, who was 8 when his family arrived in Lowell. His experiences along the way—in the U.S. Air Force, as an undergraduate here leading the Cambodian American Student Association and now as a graduate student in the Peace and Conflict Studies program—strengthened his plans for Project Save One Khmer. “The idea was to raise enough resources and volunteers to build houses in a poor, rural area in Cambodia,” says Sok, who launched the project in summer 2012. More than 30 volunteers converged to help— including college students from the Youth Experience Sharing (YES) program, grad students from the Netherlands, a Buddhist monk and an Air Force staff sergeant. YES gathered an advance team that included the village chiefs, who chose candidates for new houses.
“I decided on building the kind of house I had lived in,” says Sok. With a framework of strong poles and palm-leaf thatch for sides and roof, such houses would be roomy and traditional. “For about $500, we could provide a house for up to seven people,” he says, adding that he hired a head carpenter to oversee construction. “We completed six houses in nine days.”—SS
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UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE S P R I N G 2 0 1 3
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