A Family's Story

BB2C began with the efforts of one woman, Paula Shirk, to help the birth parents and siblings of her son Rudi, adopted in 2003. Rudi was born with the birth name Puth Chak to Ol Srun and her husband Chak. Because Chak left Srun when she was three months pregnant with three older children to raise, and because the family was already in desperate straits, Srun agreed to give 17-month-old Puth up for adoption in 2003. Rudi was accompanied by a photo of his pretty, young birth mother and three birth siblings, two boys and a girl under ten. All stared into the camera of the adoption facilitator.  All were clearly bewildered, sad, their makeshift hut behind them. Their faces showed hunger, and for Rudi’s new mom, the photo became a motivating force. Paula didn’t want Rudi at 18 to say to her, “You knew the despair my family lived in, and you did nothing?!”

And there begins a family’s story of renewal and recovery.

Paula helped Rudi’s birth parents set up a market stall in Phnom Penh and bought them a motor scooter to transport fish and vegetables to the market. Knowing how important it was for the children to get an education, Paula paid the school tuition for Rudi’s birth siblings, Sith, Srim, and Sal, at the Palm Tree Institute in Phnom Penh.