Young Man an Advocate for Children’s Rights

When asked why he is so ­concerned about children’s rights, Em Chan Makara recalls an incident in a restaurant.

A customer stood up suddenly and slammed into the young waiter, causing the boy to spill soup on the customer. The customer, out­raged, screamed at the boy, and the manager came out. He pulled the boy by the hair into the kit­chen and beat him with a wood­en spoon in full view of a crowded restaurant. That, Em Chan Makara said, is a pretty typical lot for Cambodian children.

“Children shouldn’t be worked so hard. They are sexually ex­ploited. They receive poor health care and poor-quality education,” he said.

His work for children’s rights has taken him abroad, and most recently, Em Chan Makara, 17,  was selected to go to Beijing for a conference on children’s rights. Other junkets have taken him to Thailand and the Philippines.

“I’m very proud of my son. Not only for his travels abroad, but especially for his participation in children’s rights,” Nith Sopha said.

Born in 1984, the eldest child of two, Em Chan Makara has been chairman of the Child­ren’s Committee, a youth-based NGO dedicated to children’s rights, for the past year. He has worked for children since he was 12.

“I often took my son with me on field visits and meetings. He saw the kids who were abandoned by their parents and homeless,” Nith Sopha said.

Em Chan Makara caught his mother’s passion so well that he even drags friends along on his crusades. He is a great asset to the cause, his supervisors say.

“He is so good at resolving problems,” said Leng Sokchea, Children’s Committee project manager.

“He works this job as a volunteer. We just pay him a little bit for gas,” said Morm Thany, executive director of the Child Rights Fund.

In addition to his conferences here and abroad, Em Cham Makara also writes songs for children’s rights.

His busy schedule, however, has created a minor problem of its own. The teen faces his high school finals in two months, and he said most of his time has been taken up writing proposals for the Cambodian government based on his experiences in Beijing, Thailand and the Philippines.

“I’m very worried about my exams. But I have to push my work harder,” he said.

Nith Sopha said she wishes her son would spend more time at the books, but understands the call of the cause.

“I can’t stop him,” she said. “Though I want him to finish his exams before doing anything.”

 

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