Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Tiny Toones is based in Cambodia and uses break-dance, hip hop music and contemporary arts as tools to prevent youth angst and to give young Cambodians the hope of a better life and future.
The mission is in fact to provide a safe, positive environment for high risk youth to channel their energy and creativity into arts and education, empowering them to build self-confidence for their daily lives, aim for better employment possibilities, and feel support in pursuing their dreams.
Tuy Sobil and Breakdance
The founder is Tuy Sobil, aka “KK”, a Cambodian refugee born in a Thai refugee camp in 1977. His family fled the persecution of the Khmer Rouge and in the hope of building a new life they went to America. In the US they struggled through poverty and lived in one of the most drug infected neighbourhoods of Long Beach, California. Unfortunately, during his adolescence, KK chooses the wrong road, gets to know drugs and criminality and ends up in jail. In 2004, after 8 years behind bars, he is deported to Cambodia.
He attempts is to keep the kids of the streets and to do so he opens his house to them. It doesn’t take him long to create a youth centre completely self funded. His life revolves around the youth center it’s where he spends all his time. There KK transmits his passion for hip hop culture, dance and music becoming a positive role model.
Away from the streets
Once in Phnom Penh he decides to use his pasts negative experiences to help Cambodian children, that are marginalized or in at-risk conditions. Phnom Penh is in fact one of Cambodia poorest areas with a high concentration of criminality and drug addiction, where children are orphans and HIV positive.
KK started working in the social field, engaging in training programs on HIV and drug abuse. meanwhile, KK starts using his dance talents to get closer to and instuct young people to dance.
A center to Begin Living
Currently Tiny Toones is an independent none profit organization active in the four boroughs of the Phnom Penh district. The center offers different classes, a computer lab, an open space to break dance, a recording studio, and dorms for teachers and educators who day after day contribute, with passion and discpline, to make Tiny Toones an oasis of peace, growth and fun for the many Cambodian children.
Photogallery
Tiny Toones
Cambodia Main Center and Office
House #4 on Street 460
Psah Toul Tom Poung area (also known as the Russian Market).
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
http://tinytoones.org