ThaRum

Lately I happened to visit Creative Commons, a web site that offers free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms. On the entry page, I seem to recognize a picture of two children. A boy and a girl looks Cambodian/Khmer. Well, it’s a picture of Beth Kanter adopted children.

When they grow up, they will understand the power of the “By” license, wrote Beth.

Harry and Sara, Beth Kanter’s adopted son and daughter
Photo credit MikeBlogs (remixing cambodia4kids) / CC BY. Related story: Day 8: CC Argentina

I first met Beth Kanter in London in December 2005. With no doubt, I know that her heart remains in Cambodia after her first visit to the country years ago. Apart from her work as an independent consultant, she’s currently a volunteer for Cambodia-based Sharing Foundation.

Questions for people thinking about applying a Creative Commons license to their work:
For online works, you apply a Creative Commons license to a work by selecting the license that suits your preferences. Once you have selected your license, and if you are applying it to an online work, follow the instructions to include the html code in your work. This code will automatically generate the “Some Rights Reserved” button and a statement that your work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, or a “No Rights Reserved” button if you choose to dedicate your work to the public domain. The button is designed to act as a notice to people who come in contact with your work that your work is licensed under the applicable Creative Commons license. The html code will also be include the metadata that enables your work to found via Creative Commons-enabled search engines.

I had an email interview with her a while back, but haven’t got a chance to publish it. Now, here we go:

Q: Please tell me more about The Sharing Foundation and your role?
A: I have been working as a volunteer (no pay) for the Sharing Foundation since 2000 when I met Dr. Nancy Hendrie who helped us with the adoption of our children from Cambodia. She is the founder of the Sharing Foundation
(http://blogher.org/node/13904) I started off as a volunteer working on
the Sharing Foundation’s web site (See this photo of me:
http://www.cambodia4kids.org/images/meet_harrycomputer.jpg). As time went on, I did more and more volunteer work for the Foundation, including fundraising campaigns, selling crafts, and maintaining the web site. Dr. Hendrie invited me to become a board member in 2004. As a board member, I’ve also travelled over to Cambodia to see the programs in action and I’ve taught ESL in the local village school. I also do a lot of fundraising in addition to working on technology projects.

Q: What’s the most fascinating thing that makes your heart remained in Cambodia?
A: There are so many things about Cambodia that we love, the people, the culture, the music, the dancing, the list goes on and on. We feel it is important to keep a close connection to the Cambodia so our children have this link back to their birthplace. When we adopted our son, Harry, we were blessed by a Buddhist monk (http://www.cambodia4kids.org/meet_harry/page13_bless.html). We made a promise to the monk that we would make sure that our children kept
Cambodia’s spirit in their hearts as they grow up in America and like the birds in the cages on the Mekong — that they would return.

Q: You have two adopted Cambodian children, can you tell me more what
inspired you to have them. And please tell me more about them.
Beth: We had met Dr. Hendrie and were impressed with her work in country. When we
made the decision to adopt from Cambodia, we learned as much as we could about your country - the food, the language, the customs, and felt a strong connection. There is also a fairly large Cambodian-American community near where we live and felt that was important too. We have two children, Harry who is age 7 and Sara who is age 5. They are both proud of their Cambodian
heritage, can count to twenty in Khmer, and the food - even Mchou Kroeung soup
(http://beth.typepad.com/cambodia4kidsorg/2006/09/five_khmer_food.htmla),
although they have not quite developed a taste for fish sauce! You can read a “blog” I did in 2000 about our adoption trip to get our first child, Harry.
http://www.cambodia4kids.org/meet_harry/index.html

Q: Why did you come up with your weblog to raise fund?
A: As a board member, we all do fundraising. I’ve implemented smaller campaigns on the web site in the paste, for example a campaign to raise money to purchase books for the village library and another one to purchase cribs for the orphanage. Also, when I was in Cambodia, I created “Monkey Mask kits” — which include an unpainted mask that I purchased from a mask
maker and that was brought back my hand from Cambodia. I repackaged them with paint and information about the masks. I kept the mask maker very busy! So, it was natural for me to experiment with a personal fundraising campaign on blog. Our family sponsors Leng Sopharath, a young college student, and it is a lot of money for us. We usually ask our friends and
family to donate - so the idea of doing this on my blog seemed like a good idea. (
http://beth.typepad.com/cambodia4kidsorg/2006/11/help_sponsor_le.html) It was amazing that I was able to raise her sponsorship costs in two weeks. When I heard about the contest from Yahoo
(http://promotions.yahoo.com/giving/) and the matching money, I decided to launch a second campaign to raise money for the Sharing Foundation’s
programs. The entire board, other volunteers, and supporters also worked
for hard so that we were first.

Q: Also, how do you see blogging in term of ‘connected experience’? Do you think people in Cambodia will be able to understand more about Khmer-American in the U.S and vice versa, and able to engage more.
A: I think that is the power of blogging! What is most exciting for me is being able to meet some of the bloggers from Cambodia, like you, and of course, Mongkol
(http://beth.typepad.com/cambodia4kidsorg/2006/10/apple_picking_w.html) who is now in the US studying for an advanced degree. I think you and through Global Voices have done a great job providing a focus and a way for people interested in Cambodia to find one another.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 11:54 am and is filed under Cambodia, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.