A bike can change lives?

Happy May to all! This month is all about love, love and more love!  Hence the story you're about to read is about how a bike represents our love to the deserving children in rural Cambodia.

As you know, we have given 150 scholarships early this year which the children are in our care & support. But a couple of weeks ago, PeopleStories CEO & Founder, Victoria received some news about Dara (name changed for privacy reasons), a boy in Grade 12 (last year of high school) who was about to drop out of school.

The reason was that his family is so poor that he doesn’t even have a bike to ride to school.  All these years, he has been sharing a friend’s bike to get to school.  However, since this friend has moved away, he was left with no access to school but to walk.

After trying a few weeks of walking a few kilometres each way to school and back, Dara finally decided to quit as it was getting too hard especially in the hot season. To add to that, his family also wanted him to start working at a construction site to bring home a few dollars a day.  When asked about the decision, Dara responded, "I'm thinking of dropping out of school because I don't have a bike to ride to school. I'm also learning rather slowly in school hence I wanted to leave school to work as a construction worker."

When Vic was told about the situation, her heart dropped!  All these years PeopleStories mission is to serve and help the deserving children complete school. Thus she got emotional when she knew how little Dara and his family had that he had to make the decision to leave school! We also realized how important a simple bike is for him!  In our modern world, mobility is a given and we don’t really think about it. In contrast, here in Cambodia, having a simple bike can break or fulfill a child's education which can consequently change their life.

Vic's heart didn’t just drop…it went out to this boy!  It travelled across the ocean and landed to reach Dara!

To provide as much assistance as she could, Vic worked with Veasna (from our local team) to visit this boy at home. We are so proud that Veasna is so clear on his purpose and we could clearly witness the love he has for the children.  He didn’t delay and went straight to Dara's home on the same day! 

With his visit, Veasna saw that Dara's home is really poor and he doesn’t have much! His parents were also at work hence he did not get to meet them.  Veasna had a good discussion with Dara and coached him about the importance of education. When he asked Dara about what he needed to stay in school, he replied simply "Just a bike." So, we provided him with a bicycle on that very same day.”

"I'd feel excited if I was offered a scholarship. I also hope I'll do good work in the future with it." Dara said. Hearing this, and with a few more days of reviewing his situation, Dara is now receiving our School for Life scholarship!

His dream is to become a car mechanic and if he had magic, Dara would want to repair 100 cars in 1 hour!  We do wish his dream comes true and the path to his dreams becomes easier with him finishing his education! 

If you'd like to support students like Dara to finish school head on over here to back our mission!

Sending so much love to all in the month of May! We hope you have enjoyed Dara's story and you can be sure that he will be travelling miles to school in the next few months, with your support and love!
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Story written by: Volunteer Zeleen