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By Heather J. Carlson
The Post-Bulletin
DODGE CENTER -- For teenager Naomi Wente, a bulky scrapbook serves as a constant reminder of why she has dedicated herself to helping strangers living on the other side of the globe.
Open the book and inside are dozens of photos of men, women and children living in Cambodia; of children scrambling across a giant landfill; of orphans posing with Naomi for the camera.
A year ago, the 15-year-old Dodge Center girl said she knew little about Cambodia. Then she and her family traveled last December with a group of Rochester Community and Technical College students and instructors to the Southeast Asian country. After seeing Cambodia's staggering poverty firsthand, the Triton High School student decided she needed to find a way to help.
"I wanted to be able to do something to make a difference," she said.
So the teenager focused on something basic that most Americans take for granted -- a toilet. The teenager began raising money to install toilets, septic systems and wells in Cambodia's villages. So far, she has collected more than $2,000 toward her campaign called "One Toilet at a Time."
In Cambodia, having toilets means more than improving sanitation. It can make the difference between whether teenage girls continue to go to school, said Kim Sin, who worked with Naomi's mother, RCTC speech instructor Lori Halverson-Wente, to organize the Cambodia trip. Sin's family fled the country when he was a child to escape the violence during the Khmer Rouge's reign. He now works for RCTC's media services department.
Sin said often when girls begin menstruating they are too embarrassed to use the primitive public bathrooms, which are usually simply a hole in the ground. The girls then either opt to go into a nearby forest despite the risk of landmines and kidnappings. Or they simply stop going to class altogether.
Sin said he has been impressed by Naomi's commitment to help other teenage girls in a foreign land.
"It's wonderful," he said. "The future of Cambodia relies on having girls have the education to become future government leaders."
Naomi's fundraising efforts got an unexpected boost recently when she won two tickets to Las Vegas as part of a drawing sponsored by Farr Development to celebrate its Towne Square project in Byron. Her dad, Mark Halverson-Wente, got the call saying Naomi had won the tickets.
"I said, 'Naomi is 15 and I don't think she will be going to Las Vegas any time soon," he said.
So Farr Development offered to give them $1,500 instead -- money Naomi will use for her return trip to Cambodia later this month. She will once again join the RCTC group headed to Cambodia to share the donations she has collected so far.
"Cambodia has such an impact on me spiritually and emotionally," Naomi said. "I just felt like a different person. It felt like there were more than the walls of my high school. There's a whole world out there."
Note: http://news.postbulletin.com
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