Som Sony is a 22-year-old student at Angkor University who has been a scholarship student for a year.  He is in his second year at Angkor University, studying management.  He works as an English teacher at Wat Dramneak for JWOC.  Sony has one off day a week on Sunday, when he works on a clean water project for JWOC and enjoys playing football and computer games with his friends.

            Sony comes from a small village 65 km from Siem Reap near Thailand.  His parents are older and are now retired from rice farming.  Sony works at a small restaurant Monday through Saturday in order to help support his parents.  Other members of his family include his two older sisters, who are now married and farm rice and catch fish for a living.  Growing up, Sony helped out on the farm in his free time after he started school at five years old. 

Sony has lived in Siem Reap for seven years. He started out living with the monks, then with a friend and now lives at the university where he goes to school.  He manages to see his family once a month. It takes him three hours to ride his bicycle home to his village, but several of his friends usually come along to make the trip more enjoyable.  Sony works every day from 6am to 3pm, then teaches for an hour and then spends the rest of the day, until 9:30pm, studying at Angkor University.  His days are long but he really enjoys teaching, helping the children learn English so they can get better jobs in the future. 

Sony believes that education and the clean water project are two important issues facing Cambodia today.  Most of the children in his village were unable to attend school past primary school, and very few go on to study at universities.  He would like to make English more available to students since it increases job opportunities.  Clean water is another concern for Sony, when he lived in his village he used to walk 10 km into the jungle at midnight in order to bring back clean water for his family to drink, going in the middle of the night because less people would be likely to go at that time. 

After he completes his education Sony would like to study Spanish and work as a tour guide for the temples surrounding Siem Reap.  Eventually he would like to be a manager at a restaurant or hotel, then open his own business.  Sony believes JWOC is a good organization because of the free education programs it provides and the low-interest microfinancing loans that are given out to the poor.  He would like to see the education programs expand to address the problem he sees with children in rural areas not having access to education.