FOOTBALL4GOOD MAGAZINE | MARCH 2020

Above: Girls team practice during ISF outreach pro- gramme at the Robas Angkanh School in Phnom Penh. Below: Students from the ISF school during a training session with coach Punna Song (19). “‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING LITTLE GIRL? THERE ARE MILLIONS OF STARFISH OUT THERE DYING. YOU CANNOT BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.’ THE GIRL KNEELS DOWN, PICKS UP A STARFISH, THROWS IT INTO THE SEA AND SAYS, ‘I MADE A DIFFERENCE TO THAT ONE.’” Martin Cubbon, one of Indochina Starfish Foundation’s (ISF) founding trustees quotes Loren Eiseley’s The Star Thrower “There she was, this young woman, without barely anything by way of material,” explains Martin Cubbon, one of Indochina Starfish Foundation’s (ISF) founding trustees. “She was surround- ed by a group of young kids in her bedroom in the middle of the Stung Meanchey dump, teaching basic Khmer and maths.” Since 2005, ISF have been providing educational and footballing opportu- nities to help break the cycle of abject poverty in Phnom Penh. Yet, had it not been for this chance encounter, the past fifteen years of work may never have been set in motion. “It all happened in a very serendipitous manner,” recalls Cubbon, as he explains how good friend Peter Slater met Therey, the teacher fromStungMeanchey. As a fellow chartered accountant working in Hong Kong during the early 2000s, Slater was seeing out the remainder of his time at Deutsche Bank on ‘gardening leave’ – a formof redundancy. “Being between jobs, he was travelling a lot and I recommended Cambodia after recently falling in love with the country,” says Cubbon. During his trav- els, Slater met Therey, who was work- ing as a local tour guide, had two side jobs, all while studying at university. In trying to learn more about Cambodia in the short time he was there, she offered to show him a side of the country tourists normally do not experience. Somewhere amidst the rubble and rubbish stretching 100 acres – home to thousands of Cambodians including entire families – she brought him to her makeshift classroom. Every afternoon young children would stop rummaging through the heap, gathering and selling whatever materials that others had disposed of, to learn. “He was so blown away by her work,” says Cubbon, “that he paid for her to stop working and to concentrate purely on her own studies and her passion of helping these kids.” “The reason Peter wanted to use the name ‘Starfish’,” explains fellow found- ing trustee, Leo Brogan, “was because her [Therey’s] work reminded him of the starfish parable.” Adapted from Loren Eiseley’s The Star Thrower, Slater’s thoughts turned to the little girl who, one by one, saved thousands of starfish left stranded on the beach: “What are you doing little girl? There are millions of starfish out there dying. You cannot believe that you can make a difference.” The girl kneels down, picks up a starfish, throws it into the sea and says, “I made a difference to that one.” From the moment he set out to help young people in Cambodia, it was his aim to create “one large family” 44 FOOTBALL4GOODMAGAZINE | MARCH2020