YML Cambodian Cultural Immersion

February 18, 2026

Building Connections. Experiencing Creation. Encountering Community. These are some of the most impactful aspects of our cultural immersion to Cambodia. In December 2025, Young Mercy Links (YML) members from Adelaide and Melbourne came together to visit Cambodia, working with Sister Denise Coghlan and the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) to help those affected by landmines. Though we were only in Cambodia for around 10 or 11 days, we all felt changed in some way by our experience and hope to carry lessons learned into the rest of our lives as people of Mercy.

Our trip began in Cambodia’s Capital Phenom Penh, where we gained context for our immersion and learned about the history and culture of Cambodia to ensure respect on our part and reinforce our aim of walking alongside the people we met. This included visiting sites that tell some of the story of the Khmer Rouge – guided tours of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (commonly known as S21) and Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre (commonly known as the killing fields). These sites teach visitors of the horrific conditions and treatment many Cambodians endured if they were identified as enemies of the cause. It was powerful to see how well Cambodians preserves these sites and commemorate those that lost their lives, as well as survivors, so that others can come and learn about this history in an attempt to stop it from happening again. Many of us chose to buy an available lotus and/or incense stick to place in honour of those lost at the altars at the stupa. When you visit Cambodia, if you connect deeply to the people you encounter, it becomes clear that every person has been touched in some way by the Khmer Rouge and/or the war, and we found the sharing of lived experience by the people we met invaluable to our learning. We are thankful to these people and feel blessed to have been trusted enough to have these stories shared with us.

In Siem Reap, Mindol Metta Karuna Reflection Centre has a house building project for which we spent the year raising $10,000 with the help of our wider mercy communities. With our $10,000, the Metta Karuna team, led by Reth, bought the materials needed to repair a house belonging to a woman called Sakia. The aim was to help her and her sisters feel safe and secure. This is one of the most meaningful contributions we made when we came to Cambodia as the house building project assists Cambodians living with disabilities (often Landmine victims) who are experiencing poverty. As a further gesture of our love and respect for the Cambodian people, we assisted Reth and the team on the building site by holding, carrying and nailing wood. This year, we committed to a day and a half of hard work to try to get Sakia’s house finished (we came very close with only a few floorboards to be completed by Reth’s team). She even got the hammer out herself, as did her brother who helped many of us fix any mistakes and improve our technique. It was an honour to meet her and her family, and we were so happy to share a meal with her in her home on our first day. She and her family are a testament to the spirit, hope and strength of the Cambodian people and we wish them safety and peace in the future.

Advocacy is of course a big part of Sister Denise’s and the JRS’ work in Cambodia. This manifested on our trip as a peace parade as Conflict on the Thai border escalated. Sister Denise had organised a tuk tuk parade we were honoured to participate in. Proudly wearing our new shirts with calls for peace in both Khmer and English, we paraded through Siem Reap and had lunch with the team from Metta Karuna. Chanting for peace in Khmer together certainly turned some heads! And when we wore our shirts to dinner and Angkor Wat the next day, a few Cambodians stopped us to thank us or ask for pictures of us in our shirts. We are happy to have briefly spread the message of peace the JRS and Metta Karuna is fighting for!

When we are asked “what stayed with you?”, many of us talk about our encounters with community. For those who have been before we felt we were reconnecting with old friends – Metta Karuna staff, tuk tuk drivers, and even an old friend from a market one of our members was reconnected with! Whether it be old friends or new, we each found special ways of connecting with the people we met along the way. An experience that had a profound impact on each of our members was when Sister Denise organised for us to visit two of the camps where people displaced by the conflict along the Thai border had settled. When we arrived, the children at the camps swarmed around us, and although the language barrier stopped us from having detailed conversations, it didn’t stop us from having fun and connecting with them and their families! We played with the children at each camp for hours and gifted them materials we had brought to play with afterwards so that they can continue finding joy together. We learned that the languages of play are pretty universal and all the children wanted to play with us and each other, some even learning some English while trying to teach us more Khmer! For me, I especially loved having the mothers join me for some card games. After all, everyone deserves peace, joy and breaks from stress! I found them to actually get even more into the games at times, congratulating themselves and each other as they won. While the children came to me for praise at making card matches, the mums pumped themselves up and showed pride in their skills – it was beautiful to see.

I first visited Cambodia with YML in 2023. I was struck then by its beauty and knew I would have to be back. This time, I am so thankful we got to sail on the Mekong and Tonle Sap. The Mekong sunset cruise set the tone for the trip as YML Victoria and YML South Australia came together and started to find our groove as a group. These are connections that will stay with me and remind me how lucky I am to be part of this Mercy community. For me, the cruise on Tonle Sap was the most meaningful experience of the trip that was unrelated to community connections. We had the opportunity to ride in little canoes deeps into the mangroves, hoping (or possibly dreading) to see one of the endangered Siamese Crocodiles sometimes found in the area. My first acts of social/environmental justice were as a child advocating and fundraising for animal conservation with Steve Irwin being a big inspiration for my brother and I. Sitting between the mangroves on the lake felt like a full circle moment for me. I knew I was witnessing nature at its most beautiful and I felt God’s presence. I feel so blessed to have had this experience.

I so often find it hard to sum up this trip – what it was like, what it meant to me, how I’ve changed from it. Even here I’ve felt like I couldn’t stop writing. Everything felt amazing and profound. Every person was special, every activity transformative. I am so grateful to the institute for this opportunity, our supporters for their generous contributions, the locals in Cambodia for their hospitality and trust, our YML leaders (Angela and Gaby) for their leadership and care, Sister Meredith for accompanying and mentoring us, our other members for holding space and giving themselves wholly to this process – I hope this is an experience that keeps happening for young Mercy people and if you are a YML person reading this – go to Cambodia. It will change you. In the best possible way.

By Eve Johnson (YML member since 2018)

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