Taipei, March 11 (CNA) As the only Taiwanese nonprofit non-governmental organization (NGO) devoted exclusively to humanitarian relief work in Cambodia, the Field Relief Agency (FRA) is one of a kind although it has received little attention.
Established in July 1996 by current Secretary General Yang Wei-ling, a flight attendant-turned-philanthropist, the FRA has devoted all of its energy toward education in Cambodia, which Yang believes can change children's fate in the long run.
"What we've been doing is not emergency relief work. It will probably take years to know whether our efforts improve the lives of Cambodians," Yang said.
With only three full-time members of staff in Taiwan and about 30 voluntary workers in Cambodia, the FRA in 1999 managed to establish an orphanage in Poipet, a poverty-stricken border town in northwestern Cambodia, and a vocational training center for women in the same town in 2001.
It also built the first Cambodian-language high school in northwestern Cambodia, helping more than 1,000 youths attend school free of charge.
Currently the FRA is working on a project to purchase textbooks for 10,000 Cambodian children with a budget of NT$5 million (US$150,000) -- over 40 percent of FRA's annual budget of NT$12 million.
Yang still vividly remembers an incident that changed her life. As a young flight attendant for China Airlines, she glimpsed a group of refugees from Southeast Asia in an airport in 1989 and was stunned.
"I didn't realize until then that we are all citizens of a global village. And people are supposed to be born equal, but they're not," said Yang, who afterwards quit her job and spent the next four years in Northern Thailand's refugee camps as a voluntary worker, and seven years later founding the FRA.
"It's been hard to raise the money we've needed to fund our projects. Mostly we rely on small amounts and long-term donations because we're not as 'famous' as other groups," Yang said.
"Still, I'm always happy to know that I have sowed the seed of education in Cambodia. Helping people brings me an inner peace of mind," Yang said.