Nut Chankakda was born on July 4th, 1983 in the village of Wat Bo. She enjoys reading English literature and about the history of many different areas of the world. In her free time she helps her mother with house work and often listens to music, especially the romantic and classical genres.

            Chankakda lives with her mother, father, and younger brother. Her mother is a housewife and her father is a farmer. Her brother, 22, teaches math, physics, and chemistry at Chong Kmeas, a local school for grades seven through nine. When Chankakda was young, she helped her mother with chores around the house, such as cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes. This was really helpful for the family, especially if her mother ever became too sick to work. In 1987, her family moved to her present house in the village of Chonkao Chou. She began her schooling soon after the move at age seven. She graduated from high school in 2001.

            After finishing high school, she applied and was accepted for a teacher’s position in a local province and has been teaching there ever since. She teaches Khmer literature and morality, and will sometimes teach English lessons at the Svay Tom secondary school. She really enjoys working with the students and she has made very good friends with the other teachers. Her director is also very good, and she finds it very rewarding to teach the very poor children who attend the school.

            One of the main problems that she had to deal with growing up was the economic hardships that her family continually faced. Regardless, her parents wanted the best for her and her brother and worked their hardest to provide them with as much schooling as possible. Another hardship that she and her family had to endure was the loss of two of her other siblings, a brother and a sister, who died at a very young age of sickness. This was a very difficult time for the family and they worked very hard and depended heavily on each other to overcome the hardships that they faced.

            Currently, Chankakda works on the loan project to provide low interest loans to the poor, in order to help them develop their businesses. The reason she got into and really enjoys this project is that she loves helping the poor people and their children, because she knows exactly what it is like to live and grow up in a poor environment. She want to make them as happy as possible and provide the poor and their children every opportunity available.

            Chankakda is madly in love with Cambodia and Siem Reap. She loves every aspect – the land, the people, the businesses, the culture, and the history. She wants the country to develop as much as possible and for more tourists to come so that they can see and experience the rich culture and the interesting history. She wants the world to know how special her country is.

            Chankakda received her scholarship from JWOC in March of 2007. She is currently a first year student at the Build Bright University studying English Literature. She believes that a university education will bring many good jobs opportunities that would help her make money to provide for her family and her future. She also wants to use her education to help develop her country as much as possible. She wants to use her English skills to teach other Cambodians so that they may be able to get better jobs.

            In the future, Chankakda would like to be a translator. She would also like to work as a literature teacher in a university. University teachers are generally all male, and she would like to help to change this and get more woman teachers at the universities. She would love to stay in Siem Reap, especially because she wants to remain close to her family so she can help hem whenever possible. When she starts earning a lot of money, she firsts want to help her family, who are still very poor. She then wants to do whatever it takes to help her country and would give whatever it takes to do so.