Nara Mao

Nara MAO (CANS President) is currently, an Australian Leadership Awards PhD student 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 held a number of academic positions at three Cambodian public universities .Nara has dedicated his life to education, though his dream to reform Cambodian education system has never actually materialised. But he works tirelessly to inspire his students to study hard in order to get scholarships to study in advanced countries.

With support from his Australian and American advisors: Dr Helena Grunfeld and Prof David Chandler, friends and former students who got scholarship to study in developed countries, Joy of Learning programme (Joy of Reading project and Joy of Writing project) was initiated and implemented in rural primary schools to inspire children to study hard and read more books.Joy of Planting project was also initiated and implemented in schools to motivate children to love and plant more trees to protect the environment.

Nara believes that “reading is the main door to open the world .If children read more, they know more and they will become wise students and experts in future. Good books have ability to shape children’s attitudes and behaviours. The power of good books is tremendous because they can develop children’s brain, make them to think more and dream more. Ultimately, they will become good citizens, qualified human resources, good leaders and agent of change in our society”. He 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.

As a committee member, 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.