Meet our Volunteers

My daughter and I started volunteering for TASSEL three years ago as soon as my daughter was old enough to be involved with the program. She taught phonics to young schoolchildren over the internet while I helped out as a writing teacher for one of the Khmer teachers.

Seven years ago, I met Joji Tatsugi, the founder of TASSEL, and through him first learned about the great need in Cambodia.  As soon as I heard the stories, I felt moved to help and have been involved with TASSEL since. I have also been visiting TASSEL Cambodia every summer since TASSEL started its summer program six years ago.  

The communities that TASSEL has brought me to have shown me how much I have to learn about service, responsibility, and love. Service is hard work and requires a high level of responsibility.

Through my three years of intense involvement during high school, I witnessed TASSEL progressing from being teaching-focused to expanding towards fostering love and care through emotional care, sponsorships, food aid, medical care, and professional development support.

I started getting involved with TASSEL about five years ago when a church member asked if I could sponsor a Cambodian family.  I would sponsor a boy named Ran, who was described to me as kind, soft-spoken, and very caring of his family, and his parents and younger brother.  Both Ran and his mother were HIV positive. I agreed in order to help a very poor family in a desperate situation, but I did not know how the sponsorship would change my own life. 

It started in June of 2018 when my son told me that he wanted to go on a service trip to Cambodia. I knew he had joined a service club in Singapore American School called TASSEL, but had no idea that he had an option to go to Cambodia to actually serve.

TASSEL and my life are inseparable. I would not be where I am now without Joji, Samath, my friends from Hope, and all of the TASSEL family. I cannot thank enough all the volunteers who selflessly served Cambodia for the sake of service.

I remember joining TASSEL during my freshman year in high school because my best friend persuaded me to. After a year of teaching phonics, I discovered how much I loved teaching.

Both of my daughters’ high school years were consumed with transforming a tiny, fledgling service club into one of the largest, strongest, and most impassioned student organizations on campus.  As successive officers for TASSEL, they cast vision, crafted strict new recruitment guidelines, taught with TASSEL, trained volunteers, raised funds, and created videos, artwork, and multimedia presentations to share the stories of our TASSEL students, teachers and families.

I wanted to do something truly meaningful with my life but I wasn’t sure what that would be.  Never in my wildest imagination did I think that it would lead me to Cambodia.  I have been involved with TASSEL in Cambodia since 2015 and my involvement has given me purpose and fulfillment I was looking for. 

TASSEL is having a real impact. When I visited the schools, I could see the joy and gratitude in the faces of the children and teachers. I did not see this kind of joy and gratitude in most other places in the country, which is still suffering from the effects of the genocide.

I started volunteering with TASSEL in December 2017 as a freshman in college. I was raised in a culturally and ethnically diverse area, though Southeast Asian culture never really made it onto my radar until a club fair at my small, midwestern college advertised a teaching opportunity in Cambodia.