STORIES OF CHANGE
Behind every project are people.
Survivors who found their voice, young people who chose to engage with a difficult history, and communities that chose healing over silence. These are their stories.
Survivors & Healing
"I built my own small business."
Interim Reparative Measures Project
Before joining the Interim Reparative Measures project, life felt impossible. Constant distress, no hope, and the long shadow of experiences that had never been acknowledged.
Through the project, that began to change. With counseling and emotional support and individual reparative measures - financial support that recognized the harm survivors had experienced and gave them the means to move forward - one survivor found the confidence and the means to take a step she had not imagined possible: building her own small business.
"Before joining the project, I lived with constant distress and no hope. Since participating, I have gained peace of mind, confidence, and mental resilience. The support I received allowed me to build my own small business, which has significantly improved my family's livelihood and happiness. This support exceeded my expectations and transformed my initial doubts into confidence."
Her story is not only about a business. It is about what becomes possible when survivors are seen, supported, and given the space to rebuild on their own terms.
A Journey to Courage and Hope
Interim Reparative Measures Project
"Growing up as a young girl during the Khmer Rouge period, I never wanted to recall those painful memories. That regime caused me immense suffering and hardship, and life was extremely difficult."
Ms. Moung Khly
Like many survivors of the Khmer Rouge era, Ms. Moung Khly carried the weight of that history long after the regime ended - living with anxiety, emotional suffering, and trauma that time alone could not heal.
Through the Interim Reparative Measures project, she found a path forward. Participating in health support services, older people's association meetings, and skills training, she gradually rebuilt her confidence and her connections to others. Individual reparative measures gave her the means to improve her family's livelihood, while counseling and emotional support gave her space to process experiences she had long kept buried.
Today, Ms. Moung Khly speaks of her journey not with bitterness, but with courage and hope - a testament to what recognition, support, and solidarity can make possible.
"Since I started working, I no longer feel so troubled."
Interim Reparative Measures Project
Mr. Sok Sam is 70 years old. He lives in Treuy Koh Commune, Kampot City - and like many survivors of the Khmer Rouge era, he carried the weight of those years long after they ended.
"The Khmer Rouge regime caused suffering and hardship that still affect us today. When we came through that period and survived it, we finally felt some relief. But whenever I think about those experiences, I feel like I am stuck in them."
Through the Interim Reparative Measures project, Mr. Sok Sam received support to start a small poultry business - building a chicken coop, receiving chickens and feed, and gradually expanding what he had built. It was practical support. But it was also something more.
"Since I started working, I no longer feel so troubled. Having work has improved my mood and made me feel better than when I had no work."
Today, his chickens are almost ready to sell. His livelihood is growing. And so is his sense of hope.
"I feel more hopeful about the future because the support we received helped us get started. Seeing what we have built grow and develop makes me happy."
"The anger has slowly faded - it is almost gone now."
Interim Reparative Measures Project
Three years, eight months, and twenty days. Ms. Phol Nang, 69, still counts the time she lived under the Khmer Rouge regime. The suffering, she says, was beyond anything imaginable.
"In all my life, I had never experienced hardship like that."
For Mr. Vong Hean, 73, the memories are equally unshakeable. He remembers people dying every day - with no courts, no laws, no justice. He remembers hard labor, people tied up with ropes and killed, and the years when he should have been happy filled instead with death and hunger.
"During the years when I should have been happy, I suffered terribly. All I knew was hard labor. I saw only death, never happiness, and there was nothing to eat. I still remember. It stays heavy in my heart."
For Ms. Yeay Soth, 82, the losses were deeply personal. Several of her siblings died during that time. She still does not know where they were taken.
Decades later, all three survivors live in Treuy Koh Commune, Kampot. Through the Interim Reparative Measures project, they have found something they had not expected - not just practical support, but a space to be heard, and a slow, quiet release from the weight they had carried alone for so long.
"I still carry anger," Mr. Vong Hean says, "but Kdei Karuna has helped me work through some of these issues and ease my mind. The anger has slowly faded over time - it is almost gone now."
Ms. Yeay Soth's message for the future is simple: "We should not hate or hold resentment toward one another. We need to learn to love each other, whether near or far."
Gender Justice, Youth & Education
Young people leading the conversation on gender-based violence
Gender Justice through Learning and Reflecting on SGBV
In Samlot district, Battambang, it was not a teacher or an NGO worker who led the conversation - it was the students themselves.
The Youth Friendly Club organized an awareness-raising session on gender-based violence and its impacts for 32 community members, the majority of them young women. Drawing on what they had learned through Kdei Karuna's coaching and their own research, club members facilitated a discussion that connected the history of the Khmer Rouge era to the realities of their own community today.
For participants, the session opened up new understanding - and new questions.
"I learned clearly about the terms of sex, gender, and sexual and gender-based violence during the Khmer Rouge and its impacts on the survivors."
Sav Sok Srey Neang, Grade 10, Samlot High School
"Although I have learned about this topic before, this is new knowledge for me."
Soth Visal, Grade 10, Samlot High School
Strengthening Voices & Mobilizing Support
From survivor to leader
Interim Reparative Measures Project
When Ms. Teu Ry joined the Interim Reparative Measures project, she could not have imagined where it would take her. As a survivor of conflict-related sexual violence during the Khmer Rouge era, she had lived with the consequences of that history for decades.
Being selected as a member of the Project Steering Committee was a turning point. For the first time, she had a formal role - a seat at the table where decisions were made. Through regular engagement with case managers and local facilitators, she discovered a confidence she had not known before: the confidence to speak, to contribute, and to shape outcomes for others.
Her role also took her beyond the boundaries of her own experience. Visiting survivors in parts of her commune she had never been to before, she found her empathy deepening and her commitment to others growing stronger.
"These visits expanded my perspective and deepened my commitment to supporting others."
"We learned how to speak up for ourselves and for others."
Interim Reparative Measures Project
For most of their lives, the three survivors from Kampot province had not been asked for their opinion. They had lived through the Khmer Rouge regime, carried its consequences for decades, and navigated a world that had largely moved on without acknowledging what they had endured.
In June 2026, that changed in a new way. As representatives of the survivor community supported through the Interim Reparative Measures project, they travelled to Phnom Penh to participate in a five-day training on mobilizing support - organized by the Advocacy and Policy Institute (API).
For five days, they learned how to identify problems, develop solutions, and engage with the stakeholders and decision-makers who shape the systems that affect their lives. They arrived as survivors. They left as advocates.
Their participation is part of a broader commitment within the IRM project: that recognition and healing are not enough. Survivors should also have the knowledge, the confidence, and the tools to speak - for themselves, and for others like them.
Memory, Dialogue, Justice and Reconciliation
"We have to support and take care of them to reduce their suffering."
Justice and History Outreach Project
Ms. Man Theany is 15 years old. She lives with her grandmother, who is 70 - a survivor of the Khmer Rouge era. Before participating in the Justice and History Outreach project, their conversations rarely touched on what her grandmother had lived through.
Through structured dialogue sessions at her school in Svay Rieng province, that changed. Ms. Man Theany learned not only about the history of the Khmer Rouge regime, but about how to listen - how to ask questions with care, how to create a safe space, and how to support someone processing painful memories.
She went home and used what she had learned.
"We have to deeply learn our own history. If your family members experienced the past regime, we have to support and take care of them to reduce their suffering."
Her grandmother is no longer carrying her story alone.
"I want to learn how to collect oral history to share with the next generation."
Justice and History Outreach Project
Ms. RY Sinuou is 18 years old, a student at Sok An Prey Sandek High School in Takeo province. After participating in a family dialogue session with a Khmer Rouge survivor, she did not want the conversation to end there.
She asked for more - specifically, for the tools to go further. After receiving the Oral History Collection Manual, she began thinking about what it would mean to document her own family's history, to preserve it, and to pass it on.
"I want to learn how to collect oral history for sharing with the next people."
In a country where so much was deliberately erased, that impulse - to listen, to record, to remember - is itself an act of peace.
"I am like a fish out of water - but I am still here."
Survivors & Healing · GIZ Civil Peace Service Oral History Project
Mr. Houn Sat is 67 years old. He lives in Krang Skear village, Kampong Thom province — not far from where his life was upended as a teenager by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Born in 1956, he grew up in relative stability before the regime forced the evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975. He was sent to a labour camp, separated from the structures and relationships that had once defined his life, and put to work clearing forest and farming under constant surveillance.
At nineteen, with no say in the matter, he was assigned a wife in a mass wedding ceremony — one of dozens of couples married in a single ceremony orchestrated by the regime. He did not know her. Neither had chosen this. They were told simply that the marriage "would happen regardless" of what they wanted.
"Whether I agreed or not, it was going to happen anyway."
The years that followed brought loss after loss. His mother, his older brother, his younger sister, an uncle, an aunt - all died during the regime, from starvation, illness, or execution. After the regime fell, he continued to lose: a son, taken in a violent incident years later. Survival meant learning to weave bamboo baskets to make a living, carrying grief that had nowhere to go.
Decades later, participating in an oral history project supported by Kdei Karuna and GIZ's Civil Peace Service gave him something he had not had before - a structured space to tell his story, to a young interviewer willing to listen without judgement.
His message to the generation hearing his story for the first time is simple, and hard-earned:
"I am like a fish without water - but somehow, I am still here."
"My mind was not mindful - but with Kdei Karuna, I have improved."
Memory, Dialogue & Transitional Justice Project
Ms. Sin Sima is 66 years old. She lives in Cheu Teal village, Ma'roam Commune, Kampot - the same province where, decades earlier, she survived forced labour, a forced marriage, and the loss of her brother and parents under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Today, she is a farmer, a commune council member, and one of only fifteen people in her area selected as a local facilitator by Kdei Karuna. It is a role she takes seriously.
"I liked the work of Kdei Karuna since fifteen local people were chosen as local facilitators. Before, my mind was not mindful, but when I joined and talked about my experience from time to time, it has improved."
Through her involvement with Kdei Karuna, Ms. Sin Sima found something she had not expected - the ability to process her own trauma while supporting others. She now regularly speaks with women in her community about reproductive health, physical health, and mental health, drawing on her own experience to help others recognise and manage theirs.
She has even noticed a shift in herself when it comes to the past she once could not face.
"I didn't watch the Khmer Rouge tribunal hearings on TV - whenever I saw them, I switched the channel because I could not control my emotions. But I can manage that feeling now, since I joined Kdei Karuna's events."
Her message to the younger generation is direct: learn from history, think critically, and never let yourself be swayed by propaganda again.
"Allow me to share a message to the young generations of today: do not be chained to the past. Question what is presented to you, so that you can make informed decisions for yourselves."
"Dialogue is a peaceful solution."
Memory, Dialogue & Transitional Justice Project
Mr. Sorn Mut is 69 years old. He lives in Vihear Thom Commune, Kampong Cham province, where he has farmed the land for most of his life.
In 1979, at nineteen, he was forced to marry alongside eighty other couples in a single ceremony — one of countless decisions taken out of his hands during the Khmer Rouge regime. He endured forced labour, near-starvation, and witnessed atrocities he still struggles to describe. After the regime fell, he rebuilt his life from almost nothing - two cows, his bare hands, and a determination to give his children a different future.
For decades, the memories remained, resurfacing whenever illness or hardship made him vulnerable. Rather than let that suffering define him, Mr. Sorn Mut found his own path toward peace - one rooted in dialogue, reflection, and faith.
"After the Khmer Rouge, I used to think of taking revenge. But I reconsidered, and I thought they also followed orders from others. I decided to let it go. Using violence cannot end anything."
Through his involvement with Kdei Karuna, he found new ways to process what he had lived through - sharing his testimony with students through intergenerational dialogue, participating in oral history interviews, and engaging with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal's reparations process.
"When I shared my experience, it felt like the suffering was getting out of my chest. I felt relieved. I had a chance to meet other survivors and share with them too, which helped me feel much better."
His approach to conflict - whether confronting the past or a disagreement with his own family - is the same: talk, listen, and resolve it peacefully.
"Please do not keep your mood inside. We relieve it, and find a solution peacefully."
Looking back on the experience of sharing his story, he is unequivocal about its value - both for himself, and for the generations who will carry this history forward.
"I wish Kdei Karuna to keep this work, to bring justice for the Khmer people. I am very happy to share my story, because it can help young generations learn."
