Orange County Register | 7 May 2014
After years advocating for the local
Cambodian community and helping build young Asian women as leaders, Lian
Cheun is earning national recognition.
On Tuesday in Washington, D.C., Cheun was ceremonially sworn in as a
member of the President’s Advisory Commission of Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders. The commission was formally announced in October as
part of a White House initiative and is under the auspices of the U.S.
Department of the Interior.
Cheun has been the executive director of Long Beach-based Khmer Girls
in Action since 2012 and joined the organization in 2009 as its
programs director. KGA is a community organization that was founded in
1997 with the goal of helping Cambodian girls deal with reproductive
issues and has since grown to develop leadership of Southeast Asian
youth and organize and advocate for social change.
As a member of the president’s commission, Cheun and others are
charged with working to improve the quality of life for AAPIs through
increased participation in and access to federal programs, according to
the White House. The panel also works to find innovative ways to engage
the community in efforts to improve health, environment and well-being.
Cheun has more than a decade of experience working in in low-income
communities of color. Khmer Girls in Action works to improve lives in
the Cambodian community, where 37 percent of of Cambodians nationally
have less than a ninth-grade education and only 9 percent attain a
bachelor’s degree. However, in the past three years, 99 percent of those
who have completed KGA programs received high school diplomas and 75
percent enrolled in four-year colleges.
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