Background

It all started in 1984 with the release of Roland Joffé’s film “The Killing Fields”, in which the director tells the true story of the American journalist Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran. The action covers the final weeks of Lon Nol’s regime in Cambodia in 1975. On 17 April, as the journalist is saved by his embassy, Dith Pran is ambushed in Phnom Penh. He will survive the genocidal regime put in place by the Khmer Rouge. The role of Dith Pran is played by a doctor, Aing Ngor, himself a victim of the Khmer Rouge. In 1988, the Association “Les Enfants d’Angkor” (the Children of Angkor) was set up in France on the initiative of Dr Ngor, who gave part of the money he earned from his work on the film. The idea for the association germinated in the mind of a Belgian who had worked in the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand and who had met Aing Ngor. The Association aimed to support Cambodian children – either orphans or from particularly underprivileged backgrounds – through a system of individual sponsorships. In the same year, a Belgian television channel screened “The Killing Fields”, which was followed by a debate by a panel including Dr Ngor. This gave rise to the idea of creating a sister association in Belgium, with the help of the Cambodian doctor. On 12 October 1989, the statutes of the Enfants d’Angkor-Belgique were published in the Moniteur Belge (the Belgian official journal) and this was followed a few days later by a press conference given by Dr Ngor. Very soon the first requests for information were received and the first sponsorships were put in place. The Association Angkor-Belgique really took off in December 1991 following the broadcast of “Vent du Sud”, a television programme about Cambodian children. This programme showed the work of the Belgian association, whose representatives were present in the studio. Dr Ngor also took part, together with Nop Sideth, a Cambodian refugee living in Brussels, and the French and Belgian founders of the association. The Belgian association gradually grew and took on a more solid form, and, by a decision taken on 20 July 1996, was finally able to take the important step of becoming independent from its French sister association. The association took the name of “Association Angkor-Belgique” (Association Angkor-Belgium) and its statutes were published in the Moniteur Belge. Its main aim remained the same: to offer to underprivileged children the right to an education, one of the basic rights of the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Goal

Since its creation, the Association Angkor-Belgique has devoted itself to the sponsorship of orphans or particularly underprivileged children in Cambodia. It ensures that the children regularly attend school, helped in this by the generosity of the sponsors who undertake to make a monthly contribution to the education costs of the child they sponsor.