One Book Can Empower a Child
In many places in the world,/children cannot go to school.// This is the story of those children/and of Shanti Volunteer Association (SVA),/a Japanese NGO,/which is trying to help them.//
1
　　Phea is a thirteen-year-old girl/living in a village in Cambodia.// Every morning/she goes to the river and into the forest/to get fish and fruit,/which she sells in town.// She used to go to school.// But when she was in the fourth grade,/her family could no longer pay the daily 30-yen fee.// She had to quit school.//
　　Phea says shyly,/“I can write my name,/but I’ve forgotten many things.// I wonder/if I can get a decent job.”//
　　Hak is fourteen.// When he was in the second grade,/he left school to go to work.// He collects plastic bottles and metal fragments/in a dump in the slums of Phnom Penh/for about 100 yen a day.//
　　“I envy my friends who attend school,”/he says.// “I wish I could study, too.”//
　　It is reported/that more than 70 million children around the world/cannot go to school.// To help children like Phea and Hak,/SVA has been working/to give every child an opportunity to learn.//