About

Who we are

Hello, everyone! My name is Sophean Heng and I am the Founding Director of the Building Future Opportunity Kbalromeas (BFOK) School. I live in Kok Dong Village, Toek Vill Community, where BFOK is based. I was born in the early 1980s in a rural village 80 kilometres from Siem Reap, but I have lived in this community since 2000.

Like all the Khmer of my generation, I grew up in Cambodia during challenging times. My family was very poor and surviving was difficult. Consequently, paying for school fees and resources were not a priority; therefore none of my family members were able to get a proper education. My parents were farmers and had 9 children to support, which was a struggle. Therefore, I needed to earn my own money to support myself through primary, secondary and high school.

After completing my studies, I worked many different jobs around Siem Reap to earn money to survive. During that time, I worked in a pagoda as a temple boy, cooking and collecting firewood for the monks. Afterwards, I worked as a cleaner, a gardener, a waiter, a laundry worker and as an English teacher. I worked very hard to save money, often working 2 or 3 jobs at a time.

I knew that the children back in my community were struggling and I decided that when I had enough money, I would open a school and a community center to help. I wanted them to benefit from opportunities I lacked when I was young.

In February 2014, I started the BFOK. I was very lucky: I received help from communities and international supporters, who even today help keep our school moving forward.

Our volunteer teachers

All of our teachers volunteer their time and energy to teach our students English (as well as the other subjects we offfer, such as computing classes, gardening, sports, etc.). Many of them have experience teaching and a few of them have attended university. Their commitment to the continuing education of the BFOK students is unwavering.

As our school is poor and operates via donations, we cannot afford to pay these talented and dedicated local teachers. One of our priorities is to attain recurrent funding to be able to provide them with a salary and support their higher education.