Aki Ra: Key Club, Shmey Club

Think you've done something charitable in your life? Well, check this out:

Just outside of the Angkor temple area, there lives a man named Aki Ra. He knows not his birthday, nor his exact age. He was orphaned by the purges of the Khmer Rouge and subsequently assimilated into their army.

By the time he was about 5 years old, Aki Ra was training to shoot automatic weapons and had planted his first land mines. Since then, he was conscripted twice more – once when the Vietnamese army took eastern Cambodia and once when the Cambodian Army had retaken jurisdiction – and tells tales of planting countless mines and killing many men, as it was the only way of life he knew after being brainwashed by the Khmer Rouge. Times were so bad that when no water was available, he had to urinate in a plastic bag to soften rice enough to eat it.

After the conflict ended, Aki Ra began to pay back his debt to society... in dividends. Using nothing more than a stick with a screw attached to the end, he dismantled land mines around the country. Think about that.

Today, in addition to founding and maintaining the Land Mine Museum to promote international awareness of civilian victims of land mines, Aki Ra employs fellow Cambodians (through donations to the museum) to detect and safely disarm land mines in their home villages.

If you think that wasn’t enough, Aki Ra has also founded an orphanage for victims of land mine blasts. There are about 20 kids at his facility with missing arms and legs that now have a home and are educated in brand new school facilities (also commissioned by the donations Ra has raised).

He even returned to the site of the first land mine that he planted and personally removed it and continues to disarm land mines to this day.

And to think, I feel pretty good about myself when I give a few bucks to charities here and there. Aki Ra has to be one of the most admirable people in the world.