Tiny Toones NGO


By Jenisa Rodriguez

 At Tiny Toones NGO, we got to learn from Mr. Short, a Cambodian who used to live in the US. Mr. Short was a refugee who got transferred to Thailand as a kid and then got to come to the U.S. In the U.S., his family had to live in a rough neighborhood in Bowling Green, KY. He got into a lot of trouble and eventually was incarcerated. He was eventually deported due to his record. Back in Cambodia, he had a hard time fitting in. He started to notice poor kids living off the street who needed help like him. He decided to create an organization to get street kids into a safe area where they could learn to play music, dance, paint, and play. His organization has gotten kids who would have otherwise turned to drugs or ended up trafficked into a healthy and safe environment. After spending time with Mr. Short and feeling inspired from his life story, we got to watch some of the kids break dance.

After watching the kids dance, we all got a chance to try it out for ourselves. The dance instructor, a guy, went to the front of the room and put music on while teaching us a hip hop dance, step by step. We all doubled over laughing while testing out our true coordination. We took a breather in the middle and some pictures before heading back into the room where we set up a dance circle, in which even Mrs. Bilodeau participated! After a couple free throws and a group picture we headed out, waving to all the kids.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sothea's Life Story

By Maryalice Smith  Once we ate a lovely lunch with the family who makes silk.    The group circled up to learn about the life of Sothea, one of our rustic pathways guides, and how the genocide affected his family. First we learned how the village was that his family lived in before the genocide, with a lot of green area, an environment where everyone loved each other, and some conflict with wars and the U.S. dropping bombs on Cambodia. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge started to enter their village. The  Khmer Rouge  explained to the people that they needed to leave their village because the U. S. was going to drop a bomb, so people took only a few belongings and fled. The villagers walked 35 km to a different village, unless the  Khmer Rouge  saw nice items, such as watches or earrings, where they would then take you for investigation. At the new village, his family was split up into sections with old women, young women, old men, young boys, where all of them worked. If anyone were to v
Read more

An Unexpected Encounter After Dinner One Evening

Image
By Shelby Oak We got out of the van and approached our dinner at the Friends restaurant. Behind the outdoor section of the restaurant was a stage with lights, multiple LGBT flags, and microphones for people singing and dancing on stage. During our delicious dinner at the sister restaurant of our first outing we got to watch an LGBT activist show complete with Khmer poetry, singing, dancing and ending with a drag show. This sparked many questions among the group as to what human rights were like in Cambodia and really made us think about how they were able to put on a show like that. In bigger cities in Cambodia, the LGBT community is commonly accepted and celebrated, but in more rural areas it’s not to the same extent. Within villages, LGBT is less of an open topic and more something private that isn’t celebrated but isn’t prosecuted. After our dinner and the show, we approached the two queens for a conversation. They told us about how there’s a drag bar in Phnom Penh where they
Read more

Fun Night at the Olympic Stadium

By Sydney Molaver    Before our dinner, we had the opportunity to stop at a The Olympic Stadium, which is located in the middle of Phnom Penh. We arrived to the very busy parking lot that had many people wearing jerseys, which was odd because we were not aware of any game going on. We walked up very high stairs to a free viewing area which was around 3/4 of the stadium. In America you must pay to enter games and there is assigned seating, as well as security. This is different in Phnom Penh because only 1/4 of the stadium is assigned seats where all the fans are located (during local league games, however if the national team is playing the whole stadium is assigned). When we entered the stadium there in fact was a game going on, between two local Cambodian teams each sponsored by an organization.    We watched about 10 minutes of the first half including a great goal by one of the teams. At half time a giant dance team came onto the field and performed for the fans which was re
Read more