Nell came through our UK school’s Global Citizenship Programme as a former student from one of our partner schools. In late 2017 Nell joined Edukid on a trip over to Cambodia. Nell is currently in her final year of university and plans to spend time volunteering with Edukid next year. Here she recounts her experiences in Cambodia and how the trip has inspired her in the next chapter of her journey.

My name is Nell Salvoni and while studying for my A Levels I was given the incredible opportunity to join Edukid on their annual trip to Cambodia. One student who had been supported by a family from the UK on the trip was Bonnie, who told us her story. Until I heard Bonnie’s story, I don’t think I had fully comprehended the incredible, life-changing work that Edukid does. Bonnie had grown up in a slum, where she had to pick litter from a young age to help her family make money instead of going to school. She explained how hearing a story of a pregnant woman who had died because she could not afford healthcare made her decide that she wanted to be a doctor, despite not having had access to education at the time. Now she is a qualified doctor, with her education having been supported by Edukid.

I had an amazing time delivering school packs to classes of school children from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, and despite the language barrier meeting them and entertaining them with arts and crafts and sports equipment was just as enjoyable for me as it was for them! It was truly inspiring to see the communities come together with Edukid to build schools and having met Bonnie you could see the immense value in the project to the children and their futures.

While overwhelmingly I saw the incredible potential of humanity to do good during this trip, I also visited sites that remind us of the horrific consequences of human’s potential to do evil. While staying in Phnom Penh we were taken to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former school used by the Khmer Rouge regime as a prison camp during the Cambodian Genocide in the 1970s. It was partly this experience which encouraged me to study History at university, where I am currently in my final year. I believe that if we can document and remind people of what happened in the past it will hopefully help to prevent a repetition of such atrocities and build a better future. However, being attuned to what has happened, and what could happen, is not enough if action is not taken. That is why Edukid’s work is so important. Through education, communities have been rebuilt from the devastation that Cambodia experienced in its recent history. Hopefully, through giving young Cambodian’s the tools to learn, to build prosperous futures for themselves, and even to achieve their dreams, as Bonnie and many others
have, the future will be a lot brighter.

After university I am planning to return to Cambodia to volunteer with Edukid. I am really proud that I helped to encourage my school to make lasting links with the charity and enabled other students to go too. I regularly think about the amazing people I met in Cambodia and I could not think of a more important thing to do with the skills that I have gained at university than to go back and volunteer with the incredible young people that Edukid works with.