Arn Chorn-Pond
Cambodia Advisor

Arn Chorn-Pond, a native of Cambodia, is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields and an internationally recognized human rights leader, speaker and trainer. Currently the Director of Youth Programs for the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association in Lowell, Mass., Chorn-Pond became a special advisor on Cambodian affairs for Clear Path International in early 2001.

Born into a family of performers and musicians from Cambodia's second-largest city, Battambang, Chorn-Pond was sent to a children's work camp after the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. He escaped death by execution and starvation by playing his flute for camp's guards and later fled his captors when Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia in 1979. Chorn-Pond managed to reach a refugee camp in Thailand where Peter Pond, a Lutheran minister and aid worker, befriended and adopted him.

Once educated in the United States, Chorn-Pond began a series of community rebuilding projects and founded several organizations, including Children of War, Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development, and Peace Makers, a U.S.-based gang-intervention project for Southeast Asian youths. In the mid 1990s, Chorn-Pond began the Cambodian Master Performers Program to help save his country's musical heritage.

Chorn-Pond is the recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Anne Frank Memorial Award and the Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize. He is an accomplished musician, recording artist and performer who travels the world meeting with young people from war zones.

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