Nara Mao

Dr. Nara MAO is currently, a lecturer, business consultant and President of Australian Alumni Association of Cambodia. He was an Australian Leadership Awards (ALA) and Australian Development Scholarship (ADS) alumnus at the Faculty of Business and Law, Victoria University. Through out his life, he has received scholarships from Cambodian and foreign governments including Australian, Dutch, German and Swedish to further his studies in a number of areas such as economics, education, development and leadership.

Nara began his teaching career as a primary and high school teacher in Siem Reap since 1982. Since 1993, he has taught at four Cambodian public universities .Nara has dedicated his life to education, though his dream to reform Cambodian education system has never come true.

With support from his Australian and American advisors, friends and his former students, Joy of Learning programme consisting of Joy of Reading and Joy of Writing project was initiated and implemented in rural primary schools in Cambodia to inspire disadvantaged children to study hard and read more books. Joy of Planting project is also initiated and implemented in schools to inspire children to plant more trees to protect the environment.

Nara considers that educational pollution is more serious than environmental pollution. He believes that good education is the catalyst to develop the world and qualified human capital plays an important role in a country’s development.

Based on his personal difficult experiences as a foreign student and an orphan when he was 13 years old, his main objective of being part of CANS is to unite and cooperate with interested people and organizations to support students and vulnerable children in the area of education.

As a CANS advisor and founding president, he applies and works on the principle “Do what he can, with what he has, where he is” which is the famous quote of a former US president Theodore Roosevelt.