My name is Khemara Chhorn, from Cambodia. I am 22 years old. I am a senior student at Georgetown University in Qatar, majoring in International Politics. (I was also on a study abroad program at Georgetown University main campus in Washington DC last fall 2019). Currently, I am also working part time as a Student Development Advisor (CDA) at HBKU Female Housing.

As a student, I an Event Coordinator of the Music, Art, and Culture club, and a member of several student clubs such as: The Future Is Female, Annual Undergraduate Research Conference (AURC), and Georgetown Qatar Ambassador Society. Through my experiences as a volunteer in these clubs, I have strengthened not only my communication skills, and adaptation skills, but also learned to work effectively in a team with members of different ages from diverse backgrounds. Besides experiencing life as a student, during my summer vacation back home to Cambodia, I was also a regular part-time teaching assistant at Golden Bridge International Language school (summer 2017), a volunteer at Young People DO organization Cambodia (summer 2018), and a booking assistant at Crystal Martin Company (summer 2019). Through my working experiences, I have developed many personal skills - particularly time management, self-commitment, and self-organization. Besides reading inspirational books, my hobby is to get involved in social work, even cleaning the public hospital was my pleasure.

My main aspiration is to get higher education which is not only in the sense of having myself pursuing in a high degree of education, but also reaching out to help other children in my community to achieve the same opportunity. To make this aspiration works, I began to organize the first alumni event in ROTA high school Cambodia on the 27th of May 2018 which consisted of 437 participants. The aim of this event was to “advocate for education, and gather teachers and students from eight generations.” Moreover, my friends and I are also planning to organize the first university fair in our community in this upcoming summer 2020, so that the villagers can learn about the scholarship availabilities and university options in the Capital city (but unfortunately, the Coronavirus prevented me from going to Cambodia this summer, so we need to delay our plan to next summer since online-event is almost impossible to be organized due to the technological and internet issues in our village. Thus, instead, I decided to apply for a summer-internship at Education Above All (EAA). At EAA, I worked with the Event’s team where I learned not only about how to organize online-events, but also the effective ways in responding to the educational crisis happening in the developing countries like mine. I also planned to continue my master degree in Public Affair next year in a hope that the combination of my education from Georgetown, the internship experience at EAA, and (Insha’Allah) my near-future master degree will help me to become a person I want to be—a person who has a voice to make a change in my community.