Ladies First Foundation

My name is Kolab Keth Tyssens. I live in a beautiful home and have a wonderful family consisting of four children, two beautiful twin granddaughters, and a loving husband. I have a wonderful life here in America but my life has not always been so good. Sometime in late 1979, I was lying along a footpath near the Cambodian/Thai border dying from malnutrition and malaria.

My beautiful, kind, and sweet friend was lying beside me and would soon die herself. Throughout that year, our Khmer Rouge captors had dragged us through the mountains and jungles of Cambodia, compelling us to serve them in various tasks while they fled from the pursuing Vietnamese army, including at times carrying arms and ammunition for them during battles with the Vietnamese. As was the case throughout our enslavement to the Khmer Rouge, we never had enough to eat and our captors always saved the best foods they were able to find for themselves. Consequently, we grew weaker and weaker and eventually were overcome with sickness in addition to starvation. Although our captors eventually abandoned us, we were too weak to seek the food we needed to stave off starvation and, despite finding ourselves on the Thai border, were unable to save ourselves.

Now I found myself, at only 18 years of age, too weak to sit up, lying beside a path traveled by fellow Cambodians who were also fleeing violence, hunger, sickness and death. All who passed by my friend and me were so afraid and focused on saving themselves that they were unwilling to stop and offer help or comfort to two fellow countrymen whose lives were draining from their bodies by the minute. Only a few even offered sympathetic glances toward us as they walked by. We felt a crushing sense of loneliness as we lay dying while fellow countrymen showed no real care or concern for us.

Although my friend soon died, I was blessed to be rescued by Red Cross personnel before I also lost my life. After the medical treatments in a Red Cross field hospital that brought me back to life, I struggled to survive and raise a young family within three different Thai refugee camps over the next 6 years.

THAI REFUGEE CAMP - 1982

OUR WEDDING - 1993

In 1993, six years after immigrating to America, I was able to marry a wonderful American man who allowed me to return to Cambodia to visit family still there.  While there, I witnessed the poverty and misery my family members and many other Cambodians were living in and was heartbroken from it. I committed myself at that time to do everything within my power to lift fellow Cambodians out of as much of that poverty and misery as possible. Soon thereafter, with my husband’s help, I was able to help one sister build a small business, build homes for all four sisters, provide local schooling for all my nieces and nephews, and provide medical equipment for doctors in the village where two sisters lived. We also sent money to send young Cambodians to trade schools, build houses for widows with children, and provide food for elderly people and orphans. My husband and I also served the Cambodian community locally by helping members fill out immigration and public assistance paperwork, taking Cambodian immigrants to doctors, serving Cambodian Boy Scouts in the scouting program, attending conferences to help parents resolve issues with their children at school, and teaching English through church classes.

OUR SON - 2002

In November 2002, I gave birth to the son of my wonderful husband but my husband tragically passed away five months later. After his death, I was no longer able to participate in many of the charitable activities I described above. I was, however, able to raise enough money to build two children's libraries in Cambodia, one in Siem Reap in 2010 and one in Koh Dach in 2015, to honor my husband.

Despite all that I’ve been able to do to serve my fellow Cambodians since coming to America, however, I continually see evidence of the lingering destitution of so many Cambodians and feel overwhelmed at the need that still exists.

Each time I learn about another woman or mother living in desolating circumstances, I’m reminded of how I felt during those days lying on that path to Thailand and how awful it was to be so sick and helpless and have literally nothing while the world passed me by seemingly unconcerned about my suffering. It is for the purpose of easing as much of that suffering as possible that I chose to form the Ladies First Foundation. I am in the process of completing my book, for which I have collected these real-life stories over many years.