Peter Carey’s Acceptance Speech at BNP-Paribas Award Ceremony, Paris, 21 June 2011
Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.
I feel deeply honoured and touched by the BNP-Paribas Jury’s decision to award this year’s Individual Philanthropy prize to the Cambodia Trust through the presence of myself as one of its co-founders. One could say, like Louis XVI in July 1789 when he was told by his army commander that he was facing not a revolt but a revolution in Paris, that news of this award came to me ‘out of a blue sky’. Indeed, I feel you have brought a revolution around my head – but it is one which is entirely beneficent both for the Trust and for myself. My heartfelt appreciation and thanks to you all for this high honour.
The short documentary you have just seen encapsulates the long journey we have travelled since the Trust’s early beginnings in 1989. Back then we were asked by the Cambodian Prime Minister, Samdech Hun Sen, to respond to a distressing emergency – the scourge of landmines in the aftermath of the Cambodian civil war (1970-1975, 1988-91), Khmer Rouge genocide (1975-79) and Vietnamese occupation (1979-1988). Our focus then was on the 38,000 landmine victims in Cambodia and the 56,000 polio sufferers – who were also victims of the ongoing civil war. With some 50,000 patients rehabilitated in our three Cambodian clinics, the Trust – together with our partners in the disability field in Cambodia (the ICRC, Handicap International and Veterans International) - have largely addressed that immediate and pressing need. Our current focus is now much more on the sustainability of our project through the provision of international-standard prosthetic and orthotic education. During the past 14 years since our first graduation at the Cambodian School of Prosthetics & Orthotics (CSPO) in Phnom Penh in March 1997, we have trained some 150 P&O professionals to International Society of Prosthetics & Orthotics (ISPO) Category 2 standard, two-thirds of them Cambodian and the rest from the Asia-Pacific region (in particular South and Southeast Asia). Thanks to the unstinting support of our major donor, the Nippon Foundation of Japan, we now work in four countries (Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines) where we have established P&O training schools. We have also been instrumental in the setting up of the national rehabilitation centre in a fifth country, Timor-Leste (Democratic Republic of East Timor). Our dozen Cambodian Category I (BSc equivalent) P&Os are now what the Indonesians would call ‘the point of the spear’ (ujung tombak) for our regional teaching role.
When I contemplate the development of the Trust from its uncertain beginnings, I find it very invidious to be singled out in this fashion as the recipient of this prestigious award. True I was there at the birth of the Trust, but literally hundreds of people have built the Trust that we know today. Amongst the key expatriate staff, I would like to mention the exceptional husband and wife team, Carson and Audrey Harte, who have together pioneered the Trust’s regional role – Carson as CT Executive Director and Audrey as Project Officer for our East Timor programme (2004-9). But in Southeast Asia itself, the expatriate role is fast diminishing and this is as it should be. Today in Cambodia, we have just two expatriates on our staff – our country Director and an adviser on disability rights, himself a lawyer. All the rest are Cambodians and some are seriously gifted. I think here of our youthful Director of the Cambodian School of Prosthetics & Orthotics, Ms Sisary Kheng, who secured some of the highest marks ever awarded for an extramural degree at the National Centre for Prosthetics & Orthotics at the University of Strathclyde’s Department of Engineering, when she graduated with her BSc in prosthetics & orthotics in 2007. I would also like to mention another talented husband and wife team, Heang Thearith and Sros Saroth, both Category I P&Os with BSc degrees awarded by La Trobe University in Melbourne, who have contributed so substantially to our teaching at the Sri Lankan School of Prosthetics & Orthotics (SLSPO) and who will be coming to the Jakarta School of P&O this September.
For myself, I feel a bit like a parent whose child has become an astronaut. True I was there at the birth and have given a few genes to my orbiting offspring, but that is about the limit to my contribution. All I have really been is a channel for the inexhaustible potential of the universe. Please realize that in this life anything is possible. The work which the Cambodia Trust is as necessary and as vital today as it ever was. But I will let you into a secret – the recompense of this work in terms of the enrichment of one’s life is much greater than any energy and resources one may have personally expended. When we started the Cambodia Trust in November 1989 we had few resources – no knowledge of prosthetics & orthotics and no funds. Since then we have all been on a steep learning curve. The Trust is a completely different organization today from the one we founded in November 1989. It is altogether a more professional and effective organization and for this we must thank the younger generation of P&O professionals both expatriate and Southeast Asian – especially our talented Cambodians. Exactly a year hence, I will make a report to you on how your deeply appreciated prize money has been used for the furtherance of our work in Indonesia and beyond. So next year in Jerusalem! Thank you once again ladies and gentlemen for your high honour.
