Ravi Seng Ly

Ravi Seng Ly is a Community Organizer for The Cambodian Family, a Santa Ana based nonprofit that promotes the social health of refugee and immigrant families. Here he discusses the local Cambodian community in Orange County, the importance of culture and tradition, and COVID-19’s impact upon them.

KEYWORDS: Cambodians, Buddhism, temple, donut shops, community, Khmer New Year, Khmer Rouge, culture, music, arts, literature, elders,

Interview Transcript

In Santa Ana, one of the most important places for our community is definitely the Buddhist temple on Grand Avenue. It’s the place where I’d say 90%-95% of our community members go to for different religious events or different religious ceremonies. The monks that lead the temple are very well trusted in the community. And that’s another one I should mention. Donut shops are, I don’t know if they’re important like the temple is important, but donut shops are notable because they’re mostly Cambodian run. And most of the independently run donut shops you see are probably by Cambodians. 

[History of Cambodian Community]

So the most important thing to keep in mind, or at least something very important to keep in mind, Cambodian culture was attacked during the Khmer Rouge. Cambodian arts, Cambodian music, literature, dance, any of that sort of stuff. So I’d say the most important thing to keep in mind would be that any sort of cultural practice—this includes religion, this includes literature, dance, music, any sort of cultural practice—is bringing that back from an event that took away so much from our community, from my community. So I think it’d be a very lovely thing if the next generation of my community could understand that when they’re practicing these things, when they’re reading these things, when they’re looking at Cambodian art or architecture, or listening to Cambodian stories. 

[How has COVID Affected Your Community?]

Every year, we hold a Cambodian New Year celebration at our agency. This is in April, and we do that every year, we get many people, many of our community members. Then the temple also holds their own New Year’s celebration and that attracts thousands of people. We had to cancel that event. We also had our digital New Year’s to make up for it so that we can have something. Other than that, because of the pandemic we’ve had unemployment application assistance, which is one thing we help with, rise over 500%. We have so many more community members coming to us asking for help getting these unemployment benefits because they’ve been laid off. Another big thing that we’ve been focusing on is making sure that our vulnerable seniors aren’t completely socially isolated. The really cruel or unfortunate thing about social distancing, about sheltering at home, or safer at home, is that a lot of our elder community members are in danger of being forgotten and are in danger of just being alone too long. And a lot of our programs involve mental health and suicide awareness. So the community members that we are particularly focused on [are] the ones that we absolutely need to get on the phone to get engaged, to check up with them on their calls, to make sure that they’re eating right, to make sure that they’re getting their meditation. We have to pay extra attention to those particular community members.

Interviewers: Marilyn N. Xiong and Mimi Eang

Related Resources