Saroth Chuon is a Prosthetics and Orthotics Lecturer at the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics (CSPO), where her role is to provide prosthetics and orthotics training to students.
Saroth started her prosthetics and orthotics education at the Cambodia Trust's education centre in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics, in 1998.
Originally, her dream was to become a pharmacist but her parents could not manage to pay her university fees. Luckily after she finished high school, she got 3 years scholarship from the Cambodia Trust. She graduated from CSPO in 2001.
She started her job as a prosthetist-orthotist at the Cambodia Trust's rehabilitation center in Kompong Chhnang in 2001. She enjoyed working in this field and wanted to develop her skills further in order to provide better services to the people with disabilities in Cambodia affected by mine injuries, disease, trauma and so on.
“I want to help people with disability, I am very happy when I fit them with the artificial limb or brace and then they can go back to their pervious work, and I want to improve more and more on the quality to the device that I produce for people.”
In 2002, she got a scholarship sponsored by Kumamoto Prefecture to study prosthetics and orthotics in Japan for 9 months. After she came back from Japan, she was selected to work as an assistant lecturer for CSPO. In 2006, she started a new job as a senior lecturer at CSPO.
Saroth’s next opportunity was the Bachelor's Degree upgrading program between CSPO and La Trobe University, Australia. Saroth decided to join this program in 2008 because she saw that it was a good opportunity for her to develop herself in order to help people with disabilities and transfer her skills to other students after finishing the course.
After the graduation, Saroth was given the opportunity to share her knowledge through a staff exchange with the Cambodia Trust's partnership project, the Sri Lanka School of Prosthetics and Orthotics.
Saroth with students from Timor Leste and Afghanistan
“When I just started my job as a Prosthetist-Orthotist, I was very happy with my work and my goals in that time. I just wanted to help people with disability to have good artificial limbs and braces, and help them go back to their previous work. Later on, I felt that if I had a chance to teach other people to become prosthetist-orthotists, it would be good because there are a lot of people who need prosthetic and orthotic services. Now with my Bachelor's Degree I am able to teach Diploma level. The opportunity to teach in a different country was a very good chance for me to improve myself and to gain more experience, therefore I decided to work in Sri Lanka for one year before returning to teach at CSPO.”
Watch Saroth when she was a student, making a prosthetic limb in the CSPO workshop
