Category: Changing Cambodia

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How I change Cambodia 2018-2019

Being a fourteen Cambodian girl, that got the scholarship in a marvelous school which is Liger Leadership academy seems as a fascinating opportunity for me. I got the privilege to out of my comfort zone and look to the outside environment of my own society. I am very honor to be born in this place, a place with amazing culture. In addition, by studying at Liger I got to make and generate many many positive impact and changes in my own country through our school based-learning projects. Through the projects, my mind has open and started to think deeply through the areas of each project. In addition, it also create change the people of the ways they look and think of their surroundings, the actions that they are doing every day in their daily life, and their reflection of their environment and country. Majority of those projects had the field trip to the provinces around Cambodia. For some of those, we either had performance or educational presentation to the community. While a few of those, we had the trip to conduct our data, or to o the research method. My projects that are a part of Cambodia are Community Documentary, Traveling Theater, Ecotourism and Robotic. 

Community Documentary was the exploration which we document information in the rural community. I was being a part of helping and keeping important information to get the next generation to know the rural community in my country. Through those documentary, We created our final products for the community such as creating blog, photo book, podcast and video. In addition, during the journey of the documentary we trained some of the community youth from the community, too. We gave such an awesome opportunity to them to hold the camera in their first time and produce stunning picture and video. Moreover, after our documents were finalized we went to the community to share our products and do the presentation of what we have done to the villagers. Especially, there were many people come to our presentation and they were very impressed of our achievements. 

Traveling Theater was a theater exploration where we travel from place to place to perform. Our goal for this exploration was to showcase performances, educational films and play to the rural communities and schools in the provinces around Cambodia by contributed opportunity to get awareness of their outside environment while they are having entertain. Before going on trip, Our team had prepared on setting up the stage depending on the situation of place we are going. We Also learned how to set up the electricity and the speaker.  I would say that This was one of my project that could change Cambodian’s mindset of their surroundings. It changed of how people look at things and treat things in positivity. Especially, our target audiences which were students and villagers were really really inspire and impress of what we were doing while they were having fun. I am really proud of myself and my team of being brave of performed such an in touch plays to all the audience. 

Ecotourism was an exploration which we are planning to create a Community-based ecotourism site in a Kuy Indigenous community in Preah Vihear Province, Cambodia. This year, I spent almost 14 weeks of working on this project. For the first 7 weeks, in order to create this site we needed to do the research on marketing of the project. In particular, our team spreaded the journey of interview the tourists of their interesting toward our site. We also went to the community to do our feasibility study to whether know if the place potential enough for Community-based ecotourism. I hope this project will actually happen one day, because it give such huge impacts on the community. It creates job for local people, by being a tour guide, giving accommodation or homestay to people, ability to show their skills or other. Therefore, it give the advantages to the natural resources, and environment as well. Before, most the villagers in the community are cutting down trees to sell or make coal, hunting for animals… But if the project happen, all of those activities will not going to happen again. 

Robotics was also a project where I and the other three students from the Liger Leadership Academy, preparing for the 2019 Guangxi Adolescent Robot Competition and the ASEAN National Adolescent Robot Invitational Tournament that head in Wuzhou, Guangxi, China. The First Lego League theme for this year is Into Orbit which is related to Space. It was such an amazing experience as a competitor in this competition. There were teams from 4 ASEAN countries including Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippine and many many teams from China. However, There was just one team from Cambodia which is NORAKBOT (my team). It was really honour of representing Cambodia in this competition. It was the way that shown “Cambodian kids also can do it”. It’s the way that introduce Cambodia and its culture to other countries in the competition. Especially, our team was honored to hold our Cambodia’s flag in this Science-Technology competition. 

The four above projects are a part of my changing Cambodia. But there are a lot of projects more that aimed me the step of changing my country. Those changes are start from myself or other peoples and it doesn’t matter much because of how old you are. I believe that those small changes might make a piece of positive change in Cambodia. And I hope those small changes are very benefits to my country and help me to prepared to create greater changes in the future. 

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How I change Cambodia 2017-2018

I think I can change Cambodia through the exploration, essential, advanced enrichment or skills. We can share our knowledge what we have learned to other people. We can also use our knowledge to tell people to act in positive ways. In this year, I ‘ve been learning and doing a lot of things. I hope some of all the things that I did are a part of changing Cambodia. The word change is a big thing, it is not easy to do. It needs to start from a small thing. Change also starts from a little and a little.

  • Technovation

I don’t have much  experience about coding, creating an app, business, marketing or something before I participated in Technovation. Technovation is a program for girls to learn to create an app. It is my first time to join Technovation. There are many many benefits of participating in this program. It is not easy at all to work on 12 weeks to learn to code, business model or marketing plan. Technovation allows teams of girls to create an app with an great idea to help the community or society. It took me about one night to decide to join Technovation because first I thought that it is very very difficult to create an app. I thought in myself and later on I decided to participate in Technovation because I want to try new things. In my team, there were five people including me. Our team’s name is five infinities and our app is MEP Center. Mep Center is an app to let users who are suppliers ( fixer) and customers (service receiver) in mechanical, electricity and plumbing field communicate with each other.we help the suppliers who do not have enough works can find works to do and customers can find and get to know more suppliers easily. We have created a lot of function to ensure the quality and to make sure our app is convenient to use. When I decided to try new things, there are many good results to me. If we just do or try the thing you already know, so you don’t get or learn anything. My team passed the semi final and have the opportunity to join National pitch. In the national pitch, we went on the stage and pitched our app to the judges and audience. My team felt a little nervous but later we felt confident. I am very very happy about Technovation because my team and I could create an app to help our community and we are a part of Changing Cambodia. In this program, I am very thankful to the mentors, supporters and all the people who were helping us. In addition, I felt very proud of my team and hard teamwork for receive this achievement. The other thing is that I could learn about creating app, doing business, or marketing. As a participant in Technovation and created an app, I positively believe that girls could code and create app just like boys. Finally, I encourage all the girls to believe in themself, try new things and do anything they like without thinking about gender.

  • Robotics

This is my first time to be a part of robotics exploration. Our goals were to learn how to create a wonderful robot and come up with a great idea of problems and solutions of water to join FLL robotics competition. FLL stands for the words First Lego League which is a robotics competition that challenges kids to think like scientist and engineers. During  this competition, teams will choose and solve a real-world problems and program robot using Lego Mindstorm technology to solve a set of missions in the robots game. There were two teams from Liger. My team’s name is Nerd 2 and there are five people including me in my group. We work hard as a team and tried our best in this competition. We worked hard on researching, coding and design robot. We tried our best to do it but our goal was to get experience. Win or lose was not important for us. It was our first time so our robot was just simple but it needed to be creative of making it’s head because we did different missions. This year the topic of the first lego league competitions is hydrodynamic which is about water. We did the research about the problem and solution about water to do  a presentation. Our teams came up of problem and solution about arsenic that is a real problem that Cambodia is facing. On 27, 02, 2018, it had a opportunity to go to other country and get a great opportunity to compete with other teams from different countries. I went to singapore. It is a developed country and I got to explore new different things. I hope that in the future Cambodia will be the same as Singapore. On the first day, when I arrived at the airport, I looked around and saw many great things such as tall buildings, skytrain, designing of road, garden, houses , transportations and those things are very unusual things that I see everyday. I and one of my other friend got to stay with a host family in Singapore. I stayed with Asa’s family for five days. They were very friendly and I played with their children,too. In addition, I spent a very wonderful time with them. Staying with hosting family helped me to know t about people’s life in other country​​ and to flexible in situation. In the second day, we prepared our robot and let the robot friend different missions. The third day was the competition day. There were many people and teams came from other countries join this competition. There were over an hundred teams. That means I was so proud of Cambodia that join this competition and I was also excited to represent Cambodia. When we were competing, our robot worked well and we communicated very well in each other in the group. Something could not compare to my feeling at that time, I was very very nervous but I could do it. The other part of the competition was presenting. We presented our idea really well to the judges and the judges were happy to see our idea. The idea was about the arsenic water problem which is a problem that is facing in Cambodia.  Later on, my team went to the final round. My feeling was mixed feeling condition like nervous and happy. But in the third round, I felt normal and simple. Trip to Singapore, I visited many places. I went to botanic garden with my hosting family and there were beautiful flowers, birds and trees. I also went to the museum and learned many interesting history.

In conclusion, this robotics exploration helped me to learn many many things and make changes in our country too. I could represented my country in the competition and make other country to know more about Cambodia and also present Liger. In addition, I and my team could solve the water problem the face in the country.

  • Geography

I and my friends were working on publish a book about geography in Cambodia. It is challeng to create an book and it is a enormous task to do. As a good author, there are many important duties to do. We need to work hard, doing research, trip or interview. We need to ensure that the sources are reliable and write in a good process in order to make the readers easy to understand. We divided into four regions. I am in a group in region four which working on northeast of Cambodia. In our trip, we went to four provinces to collect information.

We went to Ratanakiri, kratie, stung treng, mondulkiri province. These province are very far away and I was my first time.  In each province, we went to many places such as temples, waterfalls, mountains, forest, or departments of culture and fine art. The purpose was to create a book called Cambodian Geography book to share to the students in government schools or people who interesting in geography. It took us one year to publish this book. In this book, we included the information about the five theme of geography, provincial name and historical statues in each province and more.

I’ve learned many many concepts from this such as teamwork, writing and interview skills, and a lot more. Through this big mission, I am very proud of myself because I’ve created a big changes in my country by publishing a book which could provide advantages to the government students and people all over the world to know more about Cambodia which a part of creating impacts, especially in education system.

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Is it possible to create an ecotourism cite in an Indigenous community, Preah Vihear province? (Ecotourism exploration)

First of all, let’s me define you what is an ecotourism. Basically, ecotourism is from two words which are ecological and tourism, it is the travel to natural area, as well as local communities that conserve the environment, or sustain the well being of the local people. Our main goal for this exploration is to create an ecotourism site on a Kuy indigenous community. I hope this project will actually happen one day, because it give such huge impacts on the community. It creates job for local people, by being a tour guide, giving accommodation or homestay to people, ability to show their skills or other. Therefore, it give the advantages to the natural resources, and environment as well. Before, most the villagers in the community are cutting down trees to sell or make coal, hunting for animals… But if the project happen, all of those activities will not going to happen again.

In the process of creating this site, we need to do the research of the marketing for the project. We went to different places around Phnom Penh to interview the tourist from different countries. Basically, our main goal for the tourist survey questions is to ask,  If there’s an ecotourism site that supports indigenous community and wildlife on the loop to Angkor Wat temple, Preah temple, and Sambor Prei Kuk temple, would they like to visit or willing to go? Good news is that 82.6% of the tourists are interested to go, 11.1% of the tourists are maybe to go, and only 6.3% are not interested to go.

In addition, We went to their community and interviewed each family. Before we do our interview, we did a presentation to the villagers about what is ecotourism, the advantages of having the site and give some examples of the ecotourism place. Our main purpose is to know if they want us to create an ecotourism site in their community. According to the interview, 96.4% agrees and 3.6% disagrees.

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Travelling Theather Exploration, Round 3

          Traveling Theather!!!, definitely, the theater that can travel from place to place. It sounds unusual but our exploration and project made it happened once we’ve traveled to some places around Cambodia. Our main goal in this exploration is to showcase performances, educational films, plays like theatre to the rural communities and rural schools in the provinces by providing people with opportunities to watch performances and getting awareness while having entertainment. In this exploration, before we go on trip, we’ve prepared a lot of stuff. We’ve studied about the setting up our stage in different situations depending on the place we are going. Especially,  I am one of the communication crew which I need to contact people in orders to get their place to perform. It was kind of a challenge for us all because we need to contact from one person to one person to get the phone number that we want to have. In addition, we need to write the letters to request them also.

Image may contain: 37 people, people smiling, people standing

In this trip, we ‘ve been to three places in two provinces. We went to two schools in Takeo and Kampot and a community in Takeo. As our first trip to an elementary school in Takeo, it was a bit challenging for us to perform because the students are too young as our target audiences and they were not really paying attention to us all while performing. Our second place is at the parking lot near the market in a big community. The challenge for us in this place is finding the exact spot to perform. Consequently, this second trip is a successful one. Our third place is a really really wonderful one because the students at the school were enjoying our shows and having fun. This exploration and trip is a really enthusiastic experience for me while I’ve learned a lot of concepts.

Image may contain: 41 people, people smiling, child, crowd and outdoor

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Community Documentary Exploration

  • With the view of the rice field

Community Documentary was a exploration which documents information in rural communities. The goal was to documents the necessary informations because we want next generation to see what have been changed and developed in their community. We have four products to the communities such as creating blog, photo book, video and podcast. We collaborated with the World Renew’s youth which is the organization that helps to develop the communities that we are working on. We interviewed many villagers and we focus on different categories such as development, economic, human life, history and more. We went to four villages in Kampong Speu province.

During our exploration, we went to the villages three times. The first time, we went to absorb and think of what we want to do as our products which was pre trip.  I feel that the community that I went is very strange from mine because it is a rural area. We interviewed many people and I figured out that their life is different and more difficult that the people in my community.  At night time, we spend our time in Camkids with is a school. We did networking, communicate, sharing experience and play some games with the Camkids students.The second, we went to interviewed people again about each different themes which we have planned. And the third, we went to share our products and do the presentation about what we have done for the villages. There were many people come to watch our presentation and they impressed about what we did.

As a part of this explorations, I’ve learn about how how people live in rural village, creating blog skill, the experience working with world Renew’s students, presentation skill and collaboration in the group. I feel very comfortable in this exploration and learned many many things including skills and experiences during the exploration. During the trip, I could know more about the people life and the way they live in rural communities. I am proud of myself of being a part of helping and keeping the important information to get the next generation to know in the communities in my country.