“I want my children to learn how to use a computer,” Sangchanh Phomsavath said. “I’m just waiting for the electricity to come.”

Sangchanh Phomsavath doesn’t have electricity but she’s already thinking ahead to the day she’ll have a computer. She’ll use it to improve her children’s opportunities and manage her business. It’s a dream brought on by the recent arrival of computers at a nearby school thanks to World Links.

Phomsavath, 45, runs a dry goods shop from the front of her house in the small village of Phonsavad, a few hours north of Vientiane. Day by day she sits in her blue plastic chair, surrounded by everything from toothpaste to rope. Chickens and dogs crisscross the dirt road in front of the shop.

“I think I could use [the computer] for doing business, like for printing documents and name cards,” she said. “Right now, if I want anything printed on a computer, I have to go all the way to the city and waste a lot of time.”

Both Phomsavath and the village have gone through radical changes over the years.

Phomsavath and her family were refugees from Luang Prabang, the country’s ancient capital, during the secret war in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s. Because her family moved so often to escape the fighting, she didn’t have a chance to study beyond the third grade.

She and her family arrived in Phonsavad when it was just a jungle. More families came and they were all forced to move uphill when the nearby Nam Ngum dam was built, pushing up water levels. Phomsavath opened the shop 13 years ago. She had six children, now ranging in age from 14 to 24.

“I want my children to learn how to use a computer,” she said. “I’m just waiting for the electricity to come.”

Click here to read more about Phonsavad village and how World Links is positively affecting the community.