“What TASSEL does, as an organisation, is provide quality education to the children in Cambodia who can’t afford it. They run a school in Cambodia and our TASSEL club exists to help support that school. We raise money for the teachers’ salaries and give their students 50-minute video-call English lessons, two or three times a week. This summer, our TASSEL Club organised a trip to Cambodia in order to volunteer at the TASSEL school and teach their students English in person.

Before I went to Cambodia, I understood what TASSEL did on a basic level, but I never got to see the effects it had on people’s lives. For us, the lessons are just a three-hour commitment per week, but I saw that for the students, it’s a life-changing step towards their dream. Almost all of them say they want to become TASSEL teachers in the future because they see their teachers working hard for them, everyday. Even with the money we raise, the TASSEL teachers are still really underpaid, but they continue to teach because they have faith in their students.

Seeing the TASSEL students and teachers working so hard changed me. I had such a sense of entitlement when I first arrived in Cambodia: I was content with nothing because I already had everything. The kids and teachers of TASSEL were always so happy and I couldn’t understand why because they had nothing. They really taught me to be humble and more grateful, and also made me realise how much more we could be doing for them.

It’s often tough being the club’s leader because I have to spend a lot of time organising things for the other students that I would rather spend teaching. Seeing the girls in my club change through the video calls and get more and more into TASSEL — that’s the only thing that drives me to stand up and be a leader. This year, my goal is to train our members to become kind but useful English teachers that can really help the Cambodian students learn. My long-term hope is that everybody doing TASSEL now continues to do TASSEL when they’re older — so what started as a school thing eventually becomes part of their lives.” — Moeka