Adelaide couple Paul and Aileen Munn earn Pride of Australia Award nomination for establishing kindy for Cambodia’s poorest children

THREE years ago, the children of Oudong in Cambodia played in the dust with little prospects of a healthy life or education — but now they have a head start in life, thanks to an Adelaide couple.

THREE years ago, the children of Oudong, in Cambodia, played in the dust with little prospect of a healthy life or education.

But thanks to the efforts of Adelaide’s Paul and Aileen Munn, a new kindergarten is giving some of Cambodia’s poorest kids a kickstart for the future.

The charitable couple have spent much of the past decade helping poverty-stricken Cambodian families, helping to build villages with running water and electricity where shanty huts once stood.

Now, the Munns, who own an instant lawn business, have been nominated for the Pride of Australia Award in the community spirit category after completing the kindergarten that caters for 40 preschoolers. Mr Munn said a visit to Oudong in 2012 highlighted the need for a kindergarten.

“We’d seen it so many times, the children are playing with rocks in the dust and the dirt and then we found out that one of them had died of dengue fever,” Mr Munn said.

“It’s so sad that they have to live like that and we fly back into Adelaide where we have six grandchildren who live nothing like that.”

With help from Brighton High School students who flew to Cambodia, the new kindergarten was completed last year. Mrs Munn said she was impressed by the enthusiasm of the high school students, many of whom left their sneakers for local builders who worked barefoot.

“They get to see another side of life, they were fantastic and all the kids got in there and worked hard in 98 per cent humidity some days,” she said.

“In Cambodia, the rich kids can go to kindy but in the rural areas there is no kindy, they’re caught in a cycle of poverty.”

The children spend from 7am to 5pm weekdays at the kindergarten, where they are given hot meals and learn to speak English.

“If you have illiteracy, you can’t get a job so the only thing that’s available to them is recycling rubbish for a dollar a day,” Mrs Munn said.

“We’re in partnership with a local primary school only a couple of kilometres away so when they finish they’re going to slide into that and be so well advanced.”

Mrs Munn said learning English would give children career opportunities in tourism or hospitality. “Sometimes I’ve got to pinch myself and remind methat this really happened,” she said.

The Munns will travel back to the area — about 45km north of the capital, Phnom Penh — in September to establish a playground and vegetable patch.

All money raised goes to Cambodian people

donate at www.paulmunn-caresforcambodia.com.au