Is money the most important thing for people? How about charity and volunteer work? If you think money is the most important thing for you, have you ever thought of the people who needed help while floods were affecting Cambodia? Even though most people don’t care, Mao Pouthyroth, 28, does.

As a community relations manager, she has done a lot of comm-unity work to help poor, struggling people around Cambodia who are eager for support because of their lack of skills.

Arriving at ANZ Royal Bank’s main office, I saw Roth was calling volunteer staffers who were late. After nearly half an hour, everyone was there and ready to begin their mission. They then travelled about 25 minutes to an organisation called River Kids.

At River Kids, there was a cere-mony in progress to hand out school materials at the start of the new term. River Kids was started by a group of concerned organisations, student groups and volunteers with the purpose of giving study materials to poor children who could not support them.

As well as the study materials, Mao Pouthyroth brought some other supplies for 10 families that had been seriously affected by the recent floods.

I could see Mao Pouthyroth was very busy preparing everything for her volunteers and making sure the ceremony went smoothly. She was so busy, in fact, that we couldn’t take a picture of her because she was always behind the stage.

After all the activities at River Kids, Mao Pouthyroth and her fellow staff were very tired, but they did not want to go home yet because they wanted to go and visit some houses that were flooded after the Mekong River burst its banks.

Tired and wet, they tried their best to walk to the houses and encourage the people who lived there.

Mao Pouthyroth explained that she got the idea of helping others when she was abroad.  While working for ANZ Royal and doing her volunteer work, she won an externship in Singapore under the ASEAN Students Fellowship Program.

After that, she worked for the Cambodia Anti-Child Trafficking Coalition, the Youth Council of Cambodia and volunteered to help kids with mental disabilities.

“The most important reason that I choose to work as a community relations manager is because I want to inspire other organisations, agencies and the private sector to do volunteer work,” Mao Pouthyroth says.

“If more people in the private sector are keen on doing such things, people who need help will gain more support.”