Chanthou Pen

Chanthou has been working as deputy director of the children’s village „Tani – perspectives for children in Cambodia“ for many years now.

Chantou grew up in Tani as the youngest of six children. Her parents sold vegetables at the market, and the money that they got was just enough to feed their family. Since her older brothers got married and moved away from Tani very early, Chantou took responsibility for her family and helped her mother in the household at a very young age. After graduating from school, Chantou dreamed of becoming a teacher. However, her dream could not be fulfilled: Two of her brothers died at a young age and Chantou had to take care of her nephews and nieces. Despite these challenges, Chantou managed to continuously improve her skills. She studied and worked diligiantly, and eventually helped the mayor of a nearby commune with paper work. When our children’s village was built, Chantou realized that this would be a chance for her and she applied for the job as a housemother. She is hard-working, reliable, intelligent, and a role model for our children. Chantou came to Austria for three months to learn German, and spent another three months in Phnom Penh at the Götheinstitut to improve her language skills even further, which made it possible for her to communicate with the NGO without difficulty. This made her the ideal candidate to be appointed as the children’s village deputy director. It has always been our goal to have Cambodians lead our children’s village and to give our staff more responsibility and control over it, since they know everything about Cambodian culture and therefore can educate our children in the right way.

Chantou takes over a number of responsibilities
supervision of the children’s hygiene and their health, cleanliness in the kitchen, bathrooms, surroundings and good waste management.
education for healhy nutrition
organizing the daily life and special occasions
Organizing quality time with the children
supporting the small children with their homework
shopping, accounting and bank business

The NGO is aware that further trainings and pedagogical support for Chanthou and the housemothers is necessary in the future. If you want to support this cause financially we are looking forward to hearing from you: info@tani.at