Former traditional Japanese beauty pageant winner and Tennis Cambodia’s Global Goodwill ambassador Hisae Arai, and her two younger sisters Kiko and Seika, came out on Tuesday with a public announcement of their Three Hearts Foundation, registered in Cambodia as a non-profit organisation earlier this month to work in areas of health education, cultural exchange and sports development.

Cambodia’s former minister of health Dr Hong Sun Huot, who chaired the World Health Assembly in 2001, will head this private foundation as its president, with Hisae Arai assuming the role of the managing director. Tennis Cambodia will be an active partner with its secretary general Tep Rithivit named as the executive director.

“We will do our best to contribute to the society and raise awareness of good health for youngsters in Cambodia. In the future we hope to establish ourselves in the other Asian developing countries,” Hisae Arai told a media conference at Tennis Cambodia’s office in the National Sports Complex on Tuesday.

It was just hours after she had reached Phnom Penh from Japan with her sister Kiko, who successfully works for high-end fashion collections in Paris and is also the goodwill ambassador for

Kep province.

Unveiling the foundation’s logo, Arai said that apart from symbolising the main objectives, it stood for the support her mother Yurki Arai, who passed away a few years ago due to cancer, had given her and the other siblings in their lives.

“Just as my mother was a blessing to us we want this foundation to be a blessing to the Cambodian children,” she said.

The foundation’s first major initiative is an oral hygiene program, officially named “A Tooth-Tooth Project in Cambodia”, involving at least 250 to 300 tennis playing kids and scores of others at the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre’s Kizuna Hall on Saturday.

The University of Health and Sciences, which will be providing as many as 50 volunteers, will oversee the oral hygiene session aimed at promoting awareness of dental care among the youngsters.

A tennis program will involve three doubles matches with children playing with or against members of Cambodia’s national team.

The concluding part of the project is an educational contest in which students from various universities and colleges will help children understand the close relationship between good health, oral hygiene and sports.

The foundation’s second project this year will be the “Kep Kep Clean” environmental drive, where the tennis community will contribute a great number of volunteers among the 1,300 or so expected to be involved in cleaning up of the coastal town of nearly 45,000 residents.

Kiko Arai told the Post that she was excited to be part of this foundation with her sisters and eagerly looked forward to its major initiatives.

Meanwhile Seika, who is also equally enthusiastic with the foundation’s work, stays in Japan with her father Hiromasa, who is a baseball legend.

“We are proud partners of this foundation, which is bound to be a blessing for the country,” Tep Rithivit told the Post.

“We in Tennis Cambodia believe in not just helping players become champions on the court but we also help them off court to become champions in life.”

The dental care program on Saturday starts at 7:45am and is likely to consume the best part of four hours.