“I survived, so I wanted to help others survive, too.”

In this focus-group discussion, five Digital Divide Data graduates from Cambodia talked about what made the organization transformative beyond technical training. Chheng developed the neurological disorder chorea at eight months old, and in 1990s Cambodia, it was already hard for women to access education—even harder for women with disabilities who couldn't get hired even with degrees. Her father died when she was five, and her mother earned less than a dollar a day. When she applied to DDD through the National Disability Center, she failed the typing test but asked the IT guy to let her continue just to see what an interview looked like. Two weeks later, they hired her. "DDD was the place that saw me for my skills and talent, not my disability," she says. Sophary helped establish DDD's Cambodia office with Jeremy Hockenstein and Kathryn Lucatelli, traveling to New Delhi to learn data entry operations before returning to set up the office as its first managing director. He wanted to create jobs so people wouldn't have to migrate to other countries. Out of the first 25 hires, most were people with disabilities. Sam came from Siem Reap and almost became a monk because he didn't want to burden relatives in Phnom Penh. He rose from operator to supervisor before getting a government job at the Tax Department in 2019, where DDD's computer skills helped him during the system's digital reform.

What the group emphasized wasn't technical skills but "DDD DNA"—a culture of giving back instilled through shared meals, happy hours, and small group activities where Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, and Muslim employees worked together as one family. Sabun left DDD in 2019 to start a training center and then joined Prison Fellowship Cambodia, supporting prisoners and their families with vocational training in haircutting, tailoring, construction, and computers. He's seen prisoners become compassionate community leaders who care for families after release. Sophary now works to attract advanced tech companies from the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia to Phnom Penh so DDD graduates can move to higher-paying tech jobs like programming and cybersecurity. Their advice for DDD's future: balance commercial growth with social impact, reconnect alumni across generations, and maintain rigorous selection focused on people who truly need jobs—the "hungry learners"—not those building portfolios for their CVs. "If DDD keeps focusing on people who really need jobs, once they succeed, they will give back and help others," Sophary says. "That is the real impact."