Today’s guest is Geraldine Cox, founder of Sunrise Cambodia, a charity that was originally a single-handed orphanage in in Cambodia, that now extends its services to sustainable development and family support throughout the country.

Facts

• Geraldine Cox is a native of Adelaide
• She left school at the age of 15 and undertook various jobs, including secretarial and mining.
• At age 19 she spent a year in Europe, that being her first of many overseas adventures
• At 25 she entered the Department of Foreign Affairs and her diplomatic postings included Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and then Philippines, Thailand, Iran and the U.S.
• After resigning from the foreign service in 1987, Geraldine worked for eight years at the Chase Manhattan Bank in Sydney
• Unhappy with her corporate life, in 1993 she helped found Australia Cambodia Foundation
• When she moved to Cambodia permanently in 1995, she started working as an Executive Assistant for the Cabinet Director in the Cabinet of the then First Prime Minister of Cambodia, HRH Prince Norodom Ranariddh. In her spare time Geraldine assisted Princess Marie, the wife of Prince Norodom, in operating and supporting a residential education centre for orphaned children.
• When a military coup occurred in 1997, she decided to look after the the children of the orphanage that Princess Marie had to leave behind.
• After Geraldine was the keynote speaker at Auscare’s 1997 Refugee Week in Australia, she gained a lot of public exposure, which earned support for her cause.
• Geraldine Cox is the author of the book Home is Where the Heart Is, an autobiography of her life in Cambodia with some of the children she has cared for.
• She’s also the subject of the documentary My Khmer Heart, made by Australian filmmakers Janine Hosking and Leonie Lowe. This documentary won the Documentary of the Year Award in the prestigious Hollywood Film Festival, in the year 2000.

Quotes

“I had no plan, I did not know what I was going to do. I did not know how I was going to start. I just knew that this is what I had to do, and I lurched from one obstacle to another”.

“I had 60 or 70 children. I had no way of feeding them. I had 80 dollars and half a tank of gas (…) then, we got a $ 10,000 anonymous check, from someone I still don’t know who it was, that enabled not just to stay there, but look after the children for a whole year”.

“That’s what it’s been like. Thinks look really bad. And at the eleventh hour, something happens and it’s all alright. That’s how my life is. I don’t really have a masterplan. I just let things happen”.

“People have advised me, when I said I want to do something, ‘Geraldine, you can’t do that’, ‘you’ll never be able to do that’. You tell me I can’t do something and that’s the best way to get something done. That’s the worst advice and the best advice.”

“Everything is going to be alright in the end. And if they’re not, it’s not the end”

Links

www.sunrisecambodia.org.au

Facebook.com/sunrisecambodia