Following in dad's footsteps

This story follows the fortunes of Kara Lightman, the daughter of Alan Lightman, author and founder of The Harpswell Foundation, an NGO doing wonderful work here in Cambodia. Great to see that Kara is following in her father's footsteps.

Kara Lightman: Peace Scholar aims to help women in Cambodia (Union College, New York : The Chronicle April 2008: Volume 73, Number 4)

Kara Lightman took her first trip to Cambodia in 2005 after graduating from high school. The Concord, Mass., native traveled there with her family, who had started a foundation to help the villagers of Tramung Chrum. “The first time I went, I didn’t quite grasp it. Everything was so different and frightening,” Lightman said. “The second time, I had an overwhelming sense I needed to do something. The country has been so heavily destroyed. You walk down the street and see people whose faces have been burned off.” This summer, Lightman, who was particularly taken by the plight of the women of Cambodia, will travel alone to the Southeast Asian village. Her mission: to help Cambodian girls escape lives of poverty, ignorance and domestic violence by introducing them to the importance of education.

Lightman’s efforts are being supported by the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace. She is one of 100 students from more than 85 American colleges and universities who will receive $10,000 to help promote world peace. An interdepartmental major in Anthropology and Political Science, Lightman is the daughter of Jean, an artist, and Alan Lightman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the 1999 international bestseller, “Einstein’s Dreams.” In 2006, Alan Lightman created the Harpswell Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO), after helping a friend build schools in Tramung Chum, about 50 miles from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. “We became very close with this village,” said Kara. “They have no plumbing, no running water, no electricity; they tell time by when the sun rises.”

Upon learning that many women can’t go to college because there is nowhere safe for them to live (men can stay in monasteries, but Buddhist rules bar women from taking shelter there), Alan Lightman raised money and bought land, and in 2006, Harpswell built the first women’s dormitory in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh. The more than 30 young women who live there also receive room and board and leadership training. “I have been greatly inspired by this project, and now I want to do my own work to help the women of Cambodia,” Kara Lightman said. She noted that thousands of women suffer from domestic violence and marital rape, and that by 13, many girls are often sent away to work in the rice fields or as prostitutes to support their families. “I would like to encourage girls to stay in school and become educated, which will allow them to get reputable jobs and eventually give money back to their families and villages. I want to use education as a tool to given women a voice.”

One of the poorest countries in the world, Cambodia saw almost its entire educated class destroyed when the notoriously brutal government, the Khmer Rouge, took power in the 1970s. Lightman will spend about six weeks traveling around the country with three women from the Harpswell dormitory who will share their struggles and their stories. Ultimately, she wants her efforts to embody what is inscribed in both Khmer and English on the brass plaque in the Harpswell dormitory: “Our mission is to empower a new generation of Cambodian women.” Lightman will leave for Cambodia in July. After spending her fall term in Fiji, she will return to campus with a photojournalistic account of her work in Cambodia. “I’ve been there four times, and I have far more cultural shock now coming back to the States than I do when I go there,” she said. “It’s hard to go and not do anything. The people are so generous, and the thing that is so amazing is that even though they have so little, they have hope.” Lightman is the second Union student to be named a “peace scholar.” Last year, when the awards were created, Karyn Amira received funding for her efforts to curb landmines in Cambodia.