Welcome Phounam Pin, the Station Services Summer Intern!

On June 17, 2019, I posted my PBS photo ID picture on Facebook with the caption, “It is happening, I’m a summer intern at PBS!” I have received many heart, wow, and like emojis along with “congratulations” in the comment section. My friends are rooting for me enthusiastically and they are very proud of how far I have come on my educational journey in America. Being a summer intern at PBS Station Services is a big deal for me and such great news to my friends and sponsors who have donated to my education expenses as a foreign exchange student in this country. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Phounam Pin. I was born into a poor family in a small village of Battambang Province, Cambodia. I’m the youngest child in the family with three sisters and a brother and the first in my family to go to college. My parents survived the Khmer Rouge regime and worked hard to raise their children. My father was a violent man, and he used the money he earned to gamble and drink rather than to support his family. A couple of years after the death of my abusive father, at the age thirteen, I moved away from home to live at a Childcare Center at a local non-profit organization named, Phare Ponleu Selpak Association, the same place where I joined the circus. With support from Phare and my family and by working hard in circus school, I became an international artist with Phare the Cambodian Circus and traveled around the world.

However, you can only be a top performing circus artist for a short time because of the limitations of the body. In April 2016, I made the most difficult decision. I used up my savings to buy the airplane ticket to the USA. It was a huge decision to walk away from the only job I ever had in my life, a job that transformed my life. Nevertheless, I reasoned that I needed to follow up on this unique opportunity to reach my dream. Today, I am working on my last academic year as a foreign exchanged student at Montgomery College, pursuing an Associate Degree in General Studies as a major. After graduating from Montgomery College, I am hoping to be admitted to a 4-year college in the U.S. to earn a Bachelor Degree. I’m interested in working at the community level in my country to help people exercise their democratic rights and broaden children’s access to the arts. I want to be part of the solution to the cycle of poverty by focusing my efforts on education and the arts which helped me become the person I am today.

I feel privileged and honored to be chosen as a summer intern at PBS Station Services. I still remembered how excited I was when I received an invitation email from Carol Sorber, inviting me to join the PBS Summer Internship Program, working with her and the Station Services team. I have no doubt that the work that I am going to do in Station Services will be rewarding and I am ready for challenges that will help me grow this summer. I am grateful and looking forward to contributing and learning from this unique opportunity as an intern at PBS Station Services with great support that I will receive from the team.