In the rural villages of Cambodia, survival often comes before dreams. Children grow up learning how to work hard instead of developing dreams. For Voan, one of our newest team members, life began in hardship long before he would find true hope.
Born in 1991, Voan lost his mother when he was only three years old. She had worked as a nurse in a refugee camp, helping many people in need until she became sick with Hepatitis B and passed away.
In the village, rumors spread that witchcraft had caused her death. Some believed a curse meant for Voan had mistakenly fallen on his mother instead.
Voan grew up without a close relationship to his parents and spent much of his childhood living with his grandparents while his parents searched for work elsewhere - a common situation for many families across Cambodia. Life revolved around survival. Before school each day, the children cut grass for animals, carried water, and worked in the fields. It was hard work the children had to carry out. He grew up not having enough. Often, as children, they only had one school uniform for two to three years.
As a child, sickness nearly took his life. Malnourished and weak, his body became dangerously thin. His family turned to fortune tellers and traditional healers for answers, as they did for every problem in the household. Ceremonies were performed. Incense was burned. Traditional treatments scarred his skin. Still, he only became weaker.
The family feared he would die.
Then, after days without eating, he remembers he finally managed to eat a watermelon — and from that moment he began recovering.
Focusing on education wasn’t easy. Even within his own family, there was pressure to stop studying early and work to contribute to the family needs. Yet somehow, despite all the obstacles, Voan continued.
Looking back now, Voan sees those moments differently. What once felt like random survival now feels like the beginning of a much larger story.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF HOPE
During primary school, a man once came to the village and showed a movie about Jesus. The story deeply moved Voan, even though he rejected it at first.
Christianity felt foreign to him. He even disliked Christians for worshipping what he believed was a “foreigner’s God.” At the time, Voan wanted to become a Buddhist monk instead, hoping to build enough good karma for his mother to have a better rebirth.
But something about the story of Jesus stayed in his heart.
Everything began changing when Voan entered grade seven and moved into a Christian dormitory for children from poor families. For the first time, he found a place where education seemed possible. The dormitory was closer to school, meals were regular, and there was an atmosphere of care he had rarely experienced before.
Then tragedy struck again.
At sixteen years old, Voan climbed a tall tree searching for fruit and fell, breaking his leg severely. The medical care back then was very limited. Just to get the x-ray results took 5 days and proper treatment in his case was not given. Doctors believed he might never walk again.
His parents moved him from the hospital to a fortune teller instead, hoping spiritual remedies and traditional food would heal him. For three months he remained unable to walk.
But the pastor from the dormitory came regularly to visit and pray for him.
Slowly, Voan began trying to stand. Then one day he managed to take small steps. Little by little, he walked again — though with a limp that remains to this day.
That injury changed his life forever.
“Only education could give me hope,” Voan thought.
Despite missing months of school, he returned on crutches and successfully passed grade seven. Other students mocked him because of his disability, but something inside him had changed. One day, he simply threw away the stick and forced himself to walk.
During that season, he made a promise to God: “If You heal me, I will serve You with my life.”
TEMPTATIONS, INSIGHT, AND A NEW DIRECTION
After grade seven and experiencing God in his life more and more, Voan was baptized. Even then, his faith was still fragile. Around friends and family, he denied being Christian because he feared disrespecting his parents and felt ashamed of standing apart from his culture.
Over time, his faith grew stronger and stronger. But the older he got, temptations increased in his life too.
When Voan was in grade nine, people tried convincing him to quit school and work illegally on fishing boats in Thailand. The promised salary sounded enormous compared to what his family earned in an entire year. These kinds of often false-promises of well-paid jobs in cities or other countries are one of the doorsteps into human trafficking and exploitation - even today. Thankfully he decided not to take this job opportunity.
Instead he went to work night and day as a security guard in Phnom Penh during school break to save money for future exam fees.
In the city, Voan encountered another side of Cambodia: addiction, violence, theft, exploitation, and the nightlife industry. Friends pulled him toward parties, alcohol, and sexual temptation. Especially the nightlife in beer gardens and so called KTVs (karaoke bars) is a common place for paying customers to find young girls for sex. Even today, it is all too easy to satisfy sexual desires with often young girls who would not choose to do so if they had other prospects in life..
Yet even in those seasons, God kept calling Voan back.
When he met the woman who would later become his wife, his life slowly began changing again. He became tired of the emptiness of his lifestyle and deeply ashamed of many of his choices. While staying with a missionary family, he rediscovered his faith and remembered the promise he had made years earlier when he could not walk. He finished his high school at grade 12 successfully and chose to follow Christ wholeheartedly.
FIGHTING FOR THOSE WITHOUT A VOICE
In his adult life Voan began to work as a social worker in various anti-human trafficking and anti-sex exploitation organizations.
From 2022, he continued working undercover in anti-human trafficking operations.
The work exposed him once again to the darkest realities of exploitation — beer gardens, sexual exploitation, trafficking networks, and dangerous rescue operations including car chases..
But unlike before, he now walked into those places with purpose.
Growing up in poverty had allowed Voan to understand suffering firsthand. He had seen children forced into labor instead of education. He had witnessed violence, addiction, hunger, and abuse in village- and city-life. He knew how poverty silences vulnerable people, especially children and young women.
Some stories stayed with him deeply — teachers sexually exploiting female students in exchange for good grades, desperate families falling for wrong promises they believed would rescue them from poverty, and children growing up without protection or hope.
Rather than hardening his heart, those experiences created compassion for the vulnerable.
“The stories of Jesus caring for broken and abandoned people changed me,”Voan says.
“I want to protect children and young people who cannot fight for themselves. And I want to see that my people can experience the same God that I know now.”
Today, Voan carries both scars and hope into his work.
Every difficult chapter of his life — from poverty and sickness to temptation and brokenness — has shaped the way he now serves others. His story is not one of perfection. It is a story of rescue, perseverance and grace.
And now, that same grace is leading him to stand beside some of Cambodia’s most vulnerable people together with our team from SEREY.
We are truly happy to have him as our new team member and are looking forward to standing together against Human Trafficking and Exploitation in Cambodia.
