HARSH LESSON IN REALITY

Published in "The Bergen Record"
on Wednesday, October 27, 2004

By SONI SANGHA
STAFF WRITER

Students from all over North Jersey got a wake-up call to the horrors of war and poverty Tuesday.

"I saw so much death, life itself lost its meaning," Arn Chorn told students at Tenafly Middle School.

The students listened in pin-drop silence as Chorn shared his harrowing experiences growing up in Cambodia while the Khmer Rouge exercised brutal control.

Forced to peel clothes off people who were tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge, he made himself go numb. Showing emotion, he said, meant death.

"All of a sudden, all the killings," Chorn said. "I was only your age. I should have been in school."

His presentation was a call to arms for the nearly 700 Tenafly Middle School students and 160 from other schools who attended a meeting Tuesday to decide how they can help Cambodia, their adopted country.

The effort is an offshoot of a group that was the Tenafly Middle School Landmine Awareness Club. The group had grown in number and ambition from the nearly 10 members who raised funds for landmine clearing groups.

Now, as Global Care Unlimited, they are enlisting the help of fellow students from more than 10 schools, including Eastbrook Middle School in Paramus, Paramus High School, Alpine Middle School, Ramsey Middle School and Rockland County Day School in Congers, N.Y. They want to expand their reach to help other aspects of Cambodian life.

"Everyone was really excited about today," said Emily Gallagher, a seventh-grader whose older brother had been a member before her. "It's very important to our club because it means we're raising awareness."

Students got a glimpse of the struggles in Cambodia as they listened to representatives from a variety of charities.

In the library, artist and refugee Chath PierSath detailed his work helping hungry children. PierSath explained that a Cambodian child worker makes the equivalent of 25 cents a month.

In other rooms, Chorn discussed how he is trying to resuscitate Cambodian classical music, while a physician from a hospital explained the health needs of Cambodian children.

Two groups, HALO Trust and Clear Path International, discussed landmines.

"This is a mine," Kurt Chesko said as he held up what looked like an oversize hockey puck to illustrate how HALO finds and clears minefields. "Don't worry, I took out all the explosives."

Martha Hathaway from Clear Path showed a film about a 15-year-old boy who played with a bomb the size of a tennis ball. It exploded and killed his cousins. He survived but lost a leg, arm, thumb and eye.

"That just doesn't happen around here," said Julianne Soby, an eighth-grader from East Brook Middle School in Paramus. "It's so sad to hear that they have to live with that."

The students will go back to their schools and decide what kind of organizations they want to assist.

Teachers said the meeting was essential for the students.

"If we think we're educating our students within four walls of the community we're dead wrong. We don't live in isolation," said Vernoy Paolini, who brought about 15 students from Lounsberry Hollow Middle School in Vernon.

"If we start now, we can make more of an impact on the world," said Yoon Jeong Shin, an eighth-grader from Tenafly. "It's so awesome to see people who want to help."

E-mail: sangha@northjersey.com

Permission has been obtained from NorthJersey.com to copy this article.