About Kennedy Centre
Partner: Kennedy Baptist College
Centre 32 is the first Centre sponsored by Kennedy Baptist College in Western Australia. We launched in 2017 with 103 beautiful kids. In our local community most of the families are very poor. Our kids’ parents are mostly factory works and tuk tuk drivers, and often they don’t earn enough for essentials like rice, let alone enough to pay school fees for their kids. One of these kids, Maryalpha, still remembers how much she dreamed of going to school:
“A few years ago, when I was small, my family lived a very hard life. Sometimes we didn’t have food to eat and I couldn’t sleep because I was hungry. Each day I stayed at the factory where my mother worked, and she would find books for me to read. I saw other kids going to school, and I heard them speaking English. I really wanted to go to an English school with nice teachers, so I could learn to read more and more. When I was nearly five years old, I asked my parents if I could go to school. My mother believed in God, so she told me to pray to God and believe in Him. So every day I prayed, but when my mother took me to a school my application was denied because I was too young. I felt disappointed and hopeless, but my mother told me not to lose faith. I kept praying and believing every day, and after a few weeks the teacher from Transform Cambodia accepted me to study with Centre 32! I am so grateful every day that now I have kind teachers who teach me English and so much more. And now we receive rice every month from Transform, I never go to sleep hungry anymore. Thank you God”.
— Maryalpha
