Nou, Paul Sokhtal.

Paul Nou moved with his parents and siblings to Phnom-Penh, Cambodia in 1947. From 1960 to 1973 he worked as a high-school teacher and school principal in various places throughout Cambodia. After this, he worked for the U.S. Consulate in Battambang Province. When the Khmer Rouge regime came to power, he was made a forced laborer. After the Pol Pot government collapsed, he worked as a translator for the U.S. consulate, and the news and relief agencies in Nang Samit Camp on the Cambodia-Thailand border. This brought him to the attention of the U.S. ambassador in Bangkok and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who was then setting up Khao-I-Dang Camp.

Nou helped in the organization and administration of this and two other camps, as well as coordinating relief aid and continuing to provide translation services to embassies and relief agencies. On January 9, 1981, Nou arrived in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, where he lived for six months and was sponsored by University of Central Michigan professors and their families, members of the local First Presbyterian Church. He was selected to be Program Director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Associations Project (CMAAP) in the Rochester area.

The CMAAP was a federal program funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (Washington, D.C.), and lasted from June 15, 1981 to March 31, 1982. The Rochester CMAAP was one of thirteen local CMAAPs set up in ten states. Nou and the CMAAP coordinated the resettlement efforts of the federal government and the various local institutions, which were sponsoring or providing aid to the refugees.

The main local religious institutions sponsoring refugees were USCC, Church World Service, the Lutheran Church, and the Methodist Church. They were coordinated by the Catholic Family Center of Rochester, headed by Greg Zuroski. These institutions received federal government funds directly. Other churches or individuals who served as sponsors received funding through the Catholic Family Center. As Program Director, Nou also coordinated efforts, along with the local Cambodian association (Association of Cambodian Students of America, which existed from 1975 to 1981), to set up the Cambodian Association Board.

Through the Board, Nou provided the refugees English translation and aided them in activities such as enrolling children in school, visiting doctors, food shopping, and job interviews. When the Federal CMAAP ended, the State of New York attempted to establish a state-funded CMAAP, but it was short-lived, existing for only a few months in 1982. Nou was director of the New York CMAAP. After leaving the director position, Nou personally sponsored seventeen refugee families to come to Rochester. A few of them have since moved to other states to join relatives.

From the description of Paul Sokhtal Nou papers, 1960-1982. (New York State Historical Documents). WorldCat record id: 155424453