If ever there was a story that encapsulates the fundamental reason for our Cambodia projects and underscores the effectiveness of our in-country team and the formula behind our continued successes, it's surely that of inspirational Oddar Meanchey (OM) young man Ponleu Keo.

Coming from a desperately poor family in this remote corner of rural Cambodia, Ponleu's parents work as farm labourers, doing very long hours seven days a week for a meagre wage of just five dollars per day. His dad goes into the forest at night to hunt and fish to ensure there is food available in their tiny  dirt floor home.

Ponleu very quickly caught our attention when he started attending our primary school in OM, graduating each year in the top five students. In 2015 he moved into our boarding house to attend public high school where he continued outperforming his middle class peers, but nobody was quite prepared for what happened next.

To round out his secondary education, Ponleu sat the 2019 National Exam, scoring the highest grade of any student in the wider province of northern Cambodia and in the top handful of Year 12 students for the entire country, including those from the prestigious Phnom Penh private schools. So significant was his achievement that he received a personal invitation from the Prime Minister who wanted to meet for himself this remarkable student from the poorest corner of the country.

"When I saw how hard life was for my parents I wanted to make a strong commitment to be a good student so I tried to study very hard," Ponleu told us recently. "I know that education is very important for my life and that it can also help my family rise up from their bad situation. Even though my family is poor, poverty has never been an excuse for me to stop studying thanks to the opportunities that Supporting Cambodia has given me" he added.

With the aid of a scholarship and the continued financial backing of Supporting Cambodia, Ponleu then embarked on a five year industrial and mechanical engineering degree in Phnom Penh which we are very pleased to report he recently successfully completed, once again near the top of his class.

He has now been presented with an opportunity to get some first class engineering experience in neighbouring Singapore, but testament to the character of this inspirational young man he has postponed that to give back to our projects through mentoring our current crop of high school students and assistsing with our reporting obligations both in Cambodia and here in Australia. Early next year he will pack his bags for a stint in Singapore, before coming back to Cambodia support his family and our projects.

We are so proud of the example Ponleu has set for every one of our nearly 1200 current students in our two schools and boarding house and the hope this provides for them and their families to break the poverty cycle they were born into. It's also timely to heap praise on our incredible local in-country team who work tirelessly to give their fellow Cambodians a brighter future.

We would love for you to consider partnering with us in an array of great projects across two of Cambodia's poorest provinces by making a tax deductible donation today (or any day).