He is an educator, activist and humanitarian devoted to improving living conditions in Cambodia; his name is Alex Morales, the Director for the School Improvement Initiative at the Center for Language Minority Educations and Research at Cal State Long Beach.
He might have been seen downtown this weekend during Grand Prix selling items made by the women in Cambodia to raise funds for rice noodles for the elderly, dental and educational items, and funds to buy the water filters.
Morales’ first trip was inspired by his Cambodian best friend, and over a decade later he is still traveling there.
Morales is very adamant about the importance of Cambodian history and the genocide they went through in the ‘70s, which was carried out by the Khmer Rouge and killed over 3 million Cambodian people.
“My best friend, who was 12 years old during the genocide, told me: ‘you should go visit Cambodia; my cousin is still there and never got out,’ so I went and that changed my life.”
Morales now takes his study abroad class twice a year to villages and schools in Cambodia in order to bring supplies and give the students a first-hand look at the lives and culture of the Cambodian people.
“The amount of people we can take is around 10 to 15 volunteers,” Morales said. “The class is a 400-level education class, dealing with the genocide, history and culture of Cambodia that provides students with the understanding of Cambodian and Cambodian-American culture.”
Morales is also on the board of directors with a non-profit organization, Hearts Without Boundaries, a group that provides help to those in need in Southeast Asia. Their work is done primarily in Cambodia, with volunteer medical teams, medical supplies and clinics.
“For the older folks we are delivering rice and noodles, for the younger folks we are doing dental supplies, for the villages we are doing water filters and on a grander scale we have brought four kids to the U.S. for open heart surgeries,” Morales said.
He recently has been working with another organization called Rescue Task Force to help filter the drinking water in Cambodia.
“The last two years I’ve been with Rescue Task Force, who make natural earth clay water filters and deliver them out to the huts in villages and show them how to use the water system,” Morales said.
These water systems completely filter the villagers’ drinking water and eliminates the process of having to the boil the water to kill the bacteria, which saves them time and energy.
“There is another aspect to the class and that is to appreciate what we have in this country,” Morales said. “Here materials are provided for you, and over there they need to buy their own materials.”
Long Beach has the highest Cambodian population in the world, other than Cambodia, and Morales says that is one of the most important aspects of his class, “to understand your clients when students enter the workforce.”
Morales says that Cambodians tend to only mention the genocide to the younger generations but don’t go into details about the horrifying events that occurred.
“We take the students to the site of the killing fields and we spend about half a day there,” Morales said. “That night we go back to the city and we talk about it because to watch and read about it is one thing but to go there and be there with it gives a different perspective.”
Through his class, students will learn the importance of understanding another culture and being able to relate with them on a first-hand basis.
Morales’ next trip will be in mid-June and he still needs more applicants for those that are interested in making a difference.