Our Story

My name is Mila.  I was born in the USA from a Vietnamese mother and a German Irish father.     I am currently 16 and attend high school in a small town in California.  From a very early age my parents have taken me abroad to not only do the tourist thing but to also visit with children from various schools all over the world.  In 2023 I got to visit Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia.  Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and is home to over 1100 residents.  Of the 1100, there are 400 people including 105 children of Vietnamese heritage.  What is unique about this place is that the Vietnamese people who live here have no country to associate them with. The families have been living here for generations but are not recognized as citizens of either Vietnam of Cambodia.  They live in limbo unable to return to Vietnam and have no government benefits or access to resources by the Cambodian government. They are simply just living off of what the lake can provide.  As such, the life expectancy is 54 and over 12 percent of children die before the age of 5 due to malnourishment.   This trip has touched and broke my heart in so many ways.  I could not bear the thought of children dying simply because they do not have food.  Dying of something that can be so preventable is something hard for me to believe;  thus TonleSap Children’s Fund (TCF) was founded by my brother, Luc and I.  Our only objective is to feed these children and get that death rate to Zero.  I know that we have a lot of work to do.  We want to attack this problem head on with long term sustainable solutions.  We are also focused on bringing fresh water to them by providing filtration systems, establishing hydrophobic vegetable planting, farm raised fishing, and so much more.  We hope we can achieve our goals of not just reducing the death rate but also raising awareness so that someday these children can have a country to belong to.