SHE was not much older than the 450 Singapore teenagers gathered to hear her speak.
But her life could not be more different from theirs.
Ms Srey Mom is from Cambodia. She started working at the age of seven, was abandoned at 10, was tortured into becoming a child prostitute at 14, and contracted the HIV virus when she was 16.
Now 20, she is an activist, determined to help other Cambodian girls avoid her fate.
For many of the Singapore students who attended World Vision's 30-hour Famine Camp at the Anglo-Chinese School in Barker Road recently, she put a human face to the problems of human trafficking and child prostitution which plague Cambodia and other South-east Asian countries.
The relief and advocacy agency has run the camp annually since 1985 to educate and motivate Singapore youths to act on global issues such as hunger, poverty, HIV/Aids and the environment.
International agencies estimate that there are two million children enslaved in the sex trade in the region. In Cambodia, up to 30,000 sex workers are estimated to be below 16 years old, and about a fifth of the country's female sex workers are infected with HIV.
Poverty is one of the biggest reasons why the trade thrives, with even parents known to sell their daughters.
'Girls as young as 10 have been sold at prices ranging from US$50 to US$200 (S$68 to S$270),' says Ms Chammap Nay, 24, an aid worker with World Vision in Cambodia.
While heartbreaking, Ms Srey Mom's story is an all too familiar one in her country.
Born the only daughter and the last of seven children to a village baker and his wife, she left school after just one month to hawk bread.
Her father died when she was 10. Her mother remarried and took only the boys with her to Phnom Penh.
'She left me behind,' Ms Srey Mom recalled. 'She said I was too young and that I should look after my 70-year-old grandmother. I just helped villagers harvest rice and wash clothes for tins of rice and salted fish.'
When she was 13, she accompanied a neighbour to Phnom Penh after he told her he knew where her mother and siblings lived. But the man abandoned her in the city. To survive, she slept on the streets and begged before becoming a helper at a fruit stall.
'One well-dressed woman often came to buy from me. She was kind and sometimes paid me more. One day, she told me she could get me a job as a prawn peeler, which would pay one million riel (S$340) a month. I was so happy.'
But the woman sold her to a couple who ran a brothel near the Thai border.
'There were about 50 young girls in the house, and they were wearing nice clothes and make-up,' she recalled. 'The woman told me to wait while she went out to buy me clothes. She never came back.'
Ms Srey Mom was shocked when the couple told her that she would have to have sex with men to pay them back.
When she refused, she was locked in a tiny dark room, and denied food for a week. She was also beaten and tortured with electric wires until she submitted.
'Every day I was forced to have sex with between three and 10 men. On weekends, I sometimes had 20 clients,' she said quietly.
The men were Cambodian, Thai and foreigners, and the couple kept all the money she earned. Within two years, she was infected with HIV.
One day she fled the brothel, with three of its henchmen in pursuit. She ended up in a village and hid herself in a rubbish bin until she felt hot water poured on her.
A crowd brandishing sticks and knives had gathered, thinking she was a thief. After she explained her predicament, they raised money for her bus fare back to Kampong Cham.
She was reunited with her mother but, without medication, she soon started suffering from tuberculosis and fungal and other infections.
Word spread that she had Aids, and it affected her mother's drink stall business.
'She screamed at me to get out of the house and told me to go somewhere and die,' she recalled.
Desperate, she became a sex worker again.
'I always told my customers to use condoms but many didn't and I couldn't tell them I had Aids. Some of them were young students,' she said, her head hanging down.
One day she fainted outside a hospital while trying to seek treatment. A World Vision Trauma Recovery Centre (TRC) volunteer came to her aid, and turned her life around.
The centre takes in sexually exploited or trafficked children, helps them recover and learn skills to earn a living.
Since it was started in Phnom Penh in 1997, it has taken in about 700 children, helping them to reconnect with their families and communities, or fostering them to healthy homes.
Ms Srey Mom was given free medication, reconciled with her mother, and given a sugar cane presser to start a business. Unfortunately word of her illness leaked and it hit her business.
TRC officials convinced her to become a campaigner for the centre in Phnom Penh, a role she now relishes.
'I work with trafficked girls. I encourage them to share their experience, raise awareness so that we can prosecute brothel owners and traffickers and put a stop to this problem,' she said.
She has also become a speaker at international conferences, including a child-trafficking forum in Hanoi last year. Today, her earnings help to support her mother and brothers.
St Andrews Junior College student Rachel Cheong, 18, who attended the camp, came away moved by the activist's story.
'A group of us went up to her after her talk to hug her and we told her she was strong and inspiring and to keep on fighting,' she said.
