Vanna Christian Sun Legacy Scholarship

As American bombs dropped overhead and troops swarmed the surrounding territories, my mother’s family was left in a unique situation: while ethnically Khmer, they lived in a territory under Vietnamese control, known to Cambodians as Kampuchea-Krom, or Lower Cambodia. Living here gave my grandfather the opportunity to serve for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. However, while working for the Americans, my grandfather was captured by the Viet Cong and served as a prisoner of war for 8 years. Following the end of the war, my grandparents immigrated to the U.S. in 1996 through the Orderly Departure Program, eventually settling in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we still live today. My mother arrived in America as a teenager, the oldest of three children, and immediately started high school. However, after a few years, my mother dropped out to help my grandparents support her siblings through school. After sponsoring my uncle’s family to the U.S., I watched my father work two jobs and my parents’ savings slowly drain. Seeing their hard work, I was determined to study hard, so their sacrifices didn’t go to waste. We slowly regained our footing, until August of 2021 when my younger sister, Jennifer, was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, a rare and aggressive pediatric brain tumor. Over the next few months, I watched my parents drop everything as the world seemingly stopped. Jennifer unfortunately passed away in December of 2021. Those few months were extremely tough; COVID-19 prevented many community members from being able to visit my sister and family in the hospital. However, that didn’t stop them from rallying around us, community members from the temple called my parents to check on them, dropped off food at our house, and even took my siblings and me to school. Outside of the Khmer community, Jennifer’s girl scout troop funded a “buddy bench” to be donated to their elementary school in her memory. Watching the community come together and help support us, I realized what I had been missing. My parents emphasized English at home, not wanting me to fall behind in school, and I slowly lost my ability to speak Khmer. Inspired by the community’s response, I joined the Cambodian Legacy Project. There I learned to read and write Khmer, and I was given the opportunity to teach it to the next generation of Cambodian-Americans. Following my sister’s passing, I knew I wanted to do something in medicine, and during my freshman year at UNC, interdisciplinary approaches to medicine and neuroscience embedded in my classes caught my attention. Inspired by my family’s history, I discovered that chemical agents used during the Vietnam War have been linked to elevated cancer rates in veterans and their descendants. In the future, I plan to apply interdisciplinary approaches to neuroscience, combining emerging A.I. technologies with neuroscience to accelerate drug and treatment development. My family’s story started off like many others: immigrating to the U.S. for the chance at a better life, built on hardships, sacrifices, and determination. For Cambodians this has been the story of our people, and community is what holds us together. To me, community is about showing up for one another, in times of abundance and in times of despair. The Cambodian Legacy Project has given me the opportunity to show up for those who did the same for me. As a first-generation student, this scholarship would directly alleviate the financial burden on my family and allow me to continue my work in my community, in school, and in my career, so that another family won’t have to lose their Jennifer.