![\"Curtin](\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/VS2-edited.jpg\")
Uniting passion with purpose<\/h2>\n
Since graduating from Curtin with a Bachelor of Commerce, the management and marketing grad has worked in multiple marketing roles interstate and overseas. But it is her role today for the UNHCR that she describes as a \u2018dream job\u2019 \u2013 a perfect blend of her digital skills and humanitarian drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the Associate Officer (Digital) for the UNHCR regional office in Bangkok,\u201d Samreth smiles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been incredible to work in the country I was born in \u2013 and with the organisation that helped my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a UNHCR officer, Samreth travels globally, collaborating with international colleagues, but also confronting the harrowing refugee reality her own family faced.<\/p>\n
In 2018, she travelled to Lebanon to meet with a Syrian refugee family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went with the Middle East Regional team,\u201d she says. \u00a0\u201cWe met a family of two parents and five children aged between two and twelve, and the grandma all living in one room.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very cold and they had no heating. The children had no school to go to or toys to play with.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just had each other. It was all too real. You don\u2019t choose to be in that situation, unless it\u2019s life or death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samreth learned that the family survived on just $3 per person per day but most of the money went to the grandmother\u2019s treatment for cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very hard for me not to cry,\u201d she says. \u201cMy mother, my hero, passed away in Perth from cancer last year. I can\u2019t imagine how we would have coped if my mum had got cancer in the conditions this family was living in.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Samreth\u2019s mother who saved to take her six children to visit Cambodia and Thailand when the humanitarian worker was eighteen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my mum\u2019s dream to take us all to visit our grandfather before he passed,\u201d she recalls. \u201cIt was an amazing experience travelling all over the country with my family and seeing the village that my mum grew up in. I even saw the tiny dirt hut where my older siblings were born.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it was not until she returned to Cambodia as an Australian Youth Ambassador in 2012 that Samreth discovered the extent of the struggles her family had faced.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up, I never heard about the conflict we fled in Cambodia \u2013 it was too traumatic for my parents and brothers to speak about,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut working in Cambodia, I learned more about how my parents and brothers escaped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI finally understood what a traumatic time it was for them and their fears about me going to live and work in a country they fled from.\u201d<\/p>\n
This life-changing experience inspired the Curtin grad to pursue work in the humanitarian field.<\/p>\n
Samreth initially worked for \u2018Australia for UNHCR\u2019 in Sydney before relocating to Thailand. The Australian not-for-profit raises awareness and funds to support UNHCR’s global emergency response to refugee and humanitarian crises.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had an amazing time working in the Australian office on huge campaigns for a cause that I truly believed in \u2013 empowering and protecting refugees,\u201d she recalls with pride.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one wants to leave their home. It\u2019s simply about wanting to survive \u2013 and live.\u201d<\/p>\n