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This Wellington Community Champions Award was presented to Niborom Young in 2009 by Member of Parliament Annette King for the 'unrewarding yet outstanding work that they have provided to the city and people of Wellington by the giving of their time and services'. The award was established by three Wellington electorate MPs: Grant Robertson (Wellington Central), Peter Dunne (Ohariu), and Annette King (Rongotai) to recognise community workers who might not be in the running for higher honours.
Niborom Young (née Oum) was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1947. She arrived in New Zealand as a Colombo Plan student in November 1974 after being offered a place on an English-teaching course at Victoria University in Wellington. However, at that time Cambodia was in a state of civil war and her city was shelled constantly. She didn’t want to leave her husband, children, mother, and siblings, but her mother told her to seize the opportunity.
Just weeks later, the war escalated, and Cambodia’s borders closed. The New Zealand Government gave permanent residence to Cambodians stranded here. Unable to get news of her family, Niborom was devastated.
Here in New Zealand, she was able to help many Cambodians fleeing the Khmer Rouge to settle, including working with social workers, health and hospital visits, dealing with welfare agencies, and enrolling children in schools.
In 1980, she worked as a Red Cross interpreter in a refugee camp on the Thai–Cambodian border. It was there when she heard her family were all dead. Later, she discovered that her son and one sister had survived, and arranged for them to live in New Zealand.
When she returned, she worked for Refugee and Migrant Services, and the Cambodian Trust, which helped provide prosthetic limbs for landmine victims in Cambodia.
Niborom has been a teacher of English as a second language, a refugee and migrant counsellor, and Khmer interpreter. She is a Justice of the Peace, and was honoured with the Queen’s Service Medal for her contribution to the Cambodian community in 1997.
The scars of war never really heal, but remarried, Niborom built a new life with her husband Victor Young and their son Chester. In 2015, she published a collection of oral histories: I Tried Not to Cry: The Journeys of Ten Cambodian Refugee Women.