Girls rising to receive an education

PEPY’s Dream Project Coordinator, Duth Kimsru, recently spent 4 days in Tokyo, Japan to attend the 5^th annual film screening and fund raising event for the Asian University for Women (AUW). She was invited to be a guest speaker and met with corporate sponsors, individual donors, and embassy officials from around the world. The documentary, ‘Girl Rising’ by Richard E Robbins was watched by over 200 people attending the event coordinated by the AUW Japan Support Committee. Girl Rising is a global campaign for girls’ education. The film portrays the daily struggle girls have to access education. The countries represented in this film are India, Egypt, Haiti, Ethiopia, Peru, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia. Kimsru had the opportunity of meeting Japan’s First Lady, Mrs Akie Abe for a second time. She first had the privilege when she was studying at AUW in Bangladesh in 2011. Mrs Abe is an advocate for AUW’s mission, and expressed the importance of having female global leaders in Asia. The First Lady is a patron of the AUW fund raising committee spoke briefly at the event. A full day was scheduled to meet with corporate representatives from Toshiba, Toyota, Hitachi, and Minebea. Each time, Kimsru spoke about her life before attending AWU, what she has learned from university, and what she is doing now. The meetings were an opportunity to showcase the graduate students’ success to potential and current corporate donors.
Kimsru said some of her best highlights included:

• learning how to talk to the corporate representatives, receiving advice from them, and the etiquette of receiving business cards
• how kind and understanding the people were
• the amazing architecture in Tokyo, and how the city and buildings are lit up at night
• the clean environment
• the food is so fresh and tasty
• the underground train system

Kimsru is excited about her future. She is interested in social science, research studies, and would love to complete a graduate degree in education. Her dream is to be a ‘social change maker’ in Cambodia.