Category: Changing Cambodia

At the end of each academic year, we are asked to write a reflection on the following questions: How did I think about change? How did I raise awareness about necessary change? How did I try to promote and encourage change? How did I develop the possibility of change? How did I actually create change?

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Changing Cambodia 2017-2018

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” said Gandhi.

 

This phrase has tapped into my mind and became a part of me.

 

As a developing country, Cambodia is driving through rapid economic growth and seeking to advance the country socially. Although this country is developing quickly, there are still gaps in many sectors; education is one of them.

 

Government schools all over Cambodia are facing problems with lack of technology education and limited electricity usage. Especially for rural areas, skillful teachers and class materials resources are limited. Without adept teachers and rich of resources, it prevents students from obtaining a career and growing as change agents for their country.

 

On the other hand, Liger Leadership Academy provided me and other students with a “project based learning curriculum” that prepared us to become successful individuals in the future. In this curriculum, we have access to modern technology and English program, that expose students to different things that inspires our future.

 

The Liger model stated, “We believe that one empowered individual is capable of changing the world around them.”

 

“We rise by lifting others”, stated Robert G. Ingersoll, an American lawyer and a politician.

 

According to New York times best-selling author Steven Kotler, there is a rise in accessibility to technology today to those in the bottom billion population (poorest populations of the world).  As this bottom billion population continues to rise, technology will also play a big role.

 

I believed that if we increase technology literacy to the bottom billion, we will be able to increase the opportunities for these people to lift themselves out of poverty. Country like Cambodia, who is a part of the bottom billion, will now receive the opportunity to become a part of the rising billion with more access to technology.

 

Currently our team is trying to bring new technology which will be powered by solar panels to the public schools that are lacking technology. We have high hopes that this project will bring Cambodians a better future with more opportunities. Moreover, we believed it will give students extra experiences with computers which is advantageous for their future applications.

 

After 14 weeks of intensive planning the budget added up to 30,000 US dollars. “We can’t request 30,000 dollars from the school, that is impossible” shouted someone in the room. We were struggling with the money but not for too long, I and the three others wrote a 17-pages grant to a foundation and requested 30,000 thousand dollars.

 

After a few weeks of waiting the email has been sent to our facilitator, and it says we got the grant! I and Wasseam – a Liger learning facilitator were electrified; jumping around like crazy.

 

Our project has been implemented and are rolling in one government school. It took us a few weeks to set up all the electronic components and varieties of teachers training. By seeing and touching the computer for the first time, the students reactions were priceless, they were emotionally overwhelmed. I could see many students were so excited and engaged with the curriculum. Immediately, my head was in the cloud, I pictured the moment that our Liger students have the access to the computer the first time. I saw tears running down their beautiful faces and everyone hold their computer just as it is their baby.

 

After a few days of rolling the program we were still struggling with the technology. The computers were not fast enough and the English program was too slow, but our team is working really hard to make sure they have the best experience possible.

 

With these changes, we hope to inspire the students’ futures by exposing them to different skill sets they have never been taught. This could change the future of Cambodia with technology education and English program which will improve our developing country with better equipped and more educated people. The country will be elevated.

 

Through this exploration I can see the power of one individual and how much change one person can truly make. Think about this, when one person effects a few others, it is like a ripple effect that over time can actually impact thousands over generations. By working hard and having passion to make positive change, it can really happen.

 

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Volunteer for Khmer Sight Foundation

It is killing me watching the Cambodian elders who have no eyes vision. They could not appreciate the view of the environment around them, they can not see people who they love. When volunteered for the Khmer Sight Foundation, I put my full effort to help those elders in my community to do an eye check and get better eyesight. The patients were mostly older people with age around 50-60 years old and they got cataract which causes their eyes sight to lose. For those people who have eyes cataract, we talked to them and ask them kindly to get an eye surgery to help improve their vision. But our challenge was, those old people need to work, and take care of their grandchildren, so they resisted not to go with to the hospital. When faced this problem, our team were trying to convince them in every possible way for them to change their mind. Throughout the whole morning, we had been very successful and I felt so great helping those Cambodian elders. In addition, by volunteering in this event, it helped me to wonder and do more research about the knowledge of human’s eyes. 

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Waste Management – Exploration

In my life I always talk about the ways that I can change Cambodia. In this exploration I have learned and know how to make change for my country while I am also earning profit from it. This exploration is really help me to realize how difficult is it to start up a business. Before we start the business we need to research and making a feasibility study. Feasibility study is the study of a start up business to know if your business will make profit or it feasible. Every businesses should do the feasibility study before they start their business because they do not need to waste time and waste their money if the business is not feasible. I was working in Economic Feasibility section in our feasibility study booklet and it is a whole new idea for me. Our team also visited a school that made our of plastic bags, car’s wheels, and threw away glass bottles. I hope that Cambodia will implement this types of school and building in our society. I really proud of all the works that I did and also the work that we did together as a team. In conclusion from our feasibility study I think our business is feasible if we want to run it in the future.     

 

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Changing Cambodia 2015-2016

In the world, life is not constant the only thing that it constant is change. Changes are always happen in our life. It doesn’t care that you are a poor person or a rich person, smart or stupid, beautiful or ugly, they always find you and make things different. There are two types of changes. Change can be good or it can be bad, depend on what kind of change would you want to change. For me, becoming one of the Liger’s students was the biggest change that I made so far in my life. When I study at Liger I have a lot of opportunities to change my life and my country.

It is the fourth year at Liger. I have involved in a project called Google Science Fair. It’s a competition that have thousands of young people from different country and have the same passion about science. We were trying to use our science knowledge to create positive changes in our community and make the difference it the world. My project was about using the plastic bottles and plastic bags in a different way. By using plastic bottles and plastic bags in the right way is to use plastic bags to put in the plastic bottles. After we filled the bottle with plastic, the bottles are strong enough to use to build bench, small road, etc. So when we collect the plastic bags and plastic bottles. it will help to clean our environment, community, and our world.  We choose to make this project because we thought that plastic is one of the biggest problem in the world. I have this opportunity and I also want to share it to young Cambodian to have the same opportunity. 

The first exploration of the year was learning about Phnong indigenous minority. In this project we thought that Phnong is part of Cambodian and not a lot of people know about them and their culture. Our team decided to create a book that include tons of information about Phnong people. To research for the information out team went to the Phnong’s community and learned about them to create our book. We spent five days with the Phnong and we got lots of information that we can use it to write our book. In the book my jobs were writing and editing with my others three teammates. It the conclusion we raised three main problems that we don’t really have the best answers or solutions to. But we could only share share our idea at the Sharation. But for me I really encourage the government to help to make the positive changes. We hope people are buying more book, so we can spread our words.

This year we have the opportunity to create our own exploration with a group of people between two-six people. I was participated in Khmer Interior Design(KID) exploration. Our goal in this exploration was to designed one of the apartment in Liger school and we noticed that in Cambodia there wasn’t a lot of interior designers. I have learned that every things that appear for you to see, they have their purpose and explanation. In the exploration I have designed the kitchen and living room with my partner Thiny.

The fourth year was a fabulous year because the secretary of state could learn and know bout our school. Liger was honored to invite the secretary of state and some important people from different government schools. Every students were presenting about something about why Liger is a unique school. I was sharing one of Liger curriculum(STEAM). I think that I had give the leaders of education something that they could change in the government school.

Next year we will be Liger’s senior students, so we will have our own house ans starting to cook the food for ourselves. I was working on an exploration called Liger Senior Cook Book. And our goals were finding recipes, writing method and published a book, so people that don’t know how to cook could learn from our book. We were divided in three teams. We have created change by making the book so people could learn from it.

 

All these exploratioons have help me to make changes in my community and my country.

 

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Changing Cambodia 2014-2015

Cambodia is a fast developing country. But some part of Cambodia need to be change and develop as well. As a Cambodian I am part of the change and I need to help my country grow better. Changer are people in the country we all did some little thing to help Cambodia. Let me tell you about little thing, if you do that well it mean a lot to the change and this are the mean project I had been in this year which I think I make that little thing.

 

  1. Animal Field Guide : This project is learning about animal in Cambodia and help to preserve them. So many animal is endangered and nearly facing extinction. People don’t care how important they are. My team and I go went to provinces to teach and explain about the animal because there are hunter in the village. We are making a book that explain that it called “Illustration guide to wildlife of Cambodia”. If you want you can buy some of the book too, it is out in January.

 

  1. Recycle Community : this project is basically learning about how to reduce reuse and recycle plastic so the world would be so polluted. We always wanted to see the world in a better way the world now is in danger if we don’t act now everybody in this world will be gone. Scientist had been predicting about the future they say the north and south pole will be melt and there will be float all over the land. We help people in our community to recycle stuff so everybody live happily with their family.

 

  1. Agriculture : this project is mainly learning about rice how to grow it and how do we make better quality rice? In Cambodia rice is one of the most important thing in Cambodia economic growth. We learned it from the real farmer in the community. We help came back and try to make our own rice growing but the rice did not work. But we learn and share the knowledge with others that the big idea of this project.
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Changing Cambodia 2014-2015

This is the third year that I have been studying in Liger Learning Center school. In Liger as you know we did a lot of exploration that guide us to change our country. The concern in Cambodia that I see every days is people have limited of education. Cambodian have limited education on waste. Currently there is lot of plastic waste everywhere in Cambodia. Plastic effect a lot of things in the world. It effect the environment, human, and aquatic animal. The bad impact for the environment is plant. We can not grow the plants with the soil that have plastic in it, because it doesn’t give nutrient to the plant. And if you burn the plastic it will release Carbon Dioxide so it caused climate change. The plastic has a lot of chemical in it , so when you burn it the chemical go into the air. And people breathed the chemical in and the people can get cancer disease. For the aquatic animal, plastic killed a lot of animals. When people throw the plastic in the water so the animal eat it because they think that is there food. For the organic waste people in cambodia burn it. They don’t know the effect that it give from burning the organic waste. When you burn the organic waste it will make the methane gas and methane gas is 21 hotter than Carbon Dioxide. After I learned about the waste I really like to share all of the information that I had studied. I shared some of the information with my family and my friend. By sharing them the information I hoped that they will tell it to their family and friends. So Cambodia will get better with education about waste.

I have not really done any big change in my country because I am still young. But what I can do is by sharing information that I had learned in my school. So it’s not a really big change.

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Changing Cambodia 2013 – 2014

In this whole year that i had been learn in Liger. I changed cambodia a little bit by teaching some of the cambodia child in Takeo and other place. I had been going to Takeo province to teach the child in NFO organization. I teach them to recycle thing using many thing like card board and other stuff. I tought them how to make toy using the structure of simple machine and using recycle material. To do that I tought them that in the country don’t have the materials. So we taught them a trick using recycle materials like plastic and foam. Foam can melt easily so we can use gasoline to melt it and it will be a little bit liquid then we can use it as glue. I get that trick from my grandpa and all of those thing you see doing great at Liger. I learn it from my grandpa I did not know that it possible to do it in my life. The last thing that i had been helping Cambodia is learning how cambodia change. This thing is simple but it will help. I did that because it simple and to change Cambodia it doesn’t meant that we has to help out side but it about what you choose help.

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Changing Cambodia

My name is davith. I’m live in Cambodia. I am 10 years old. Now I want to develop my country. So I want to make my country better. But I am a kid so I can’t change my country or develop my country yet. But one thing that I have is knowledge. I have a lot of diffrent knowledge that it can be my foundation and it is the way that I can change my country in the future. In Liger Learning Center school taught me a lot of things that can help my country. My best subbjects that I like to learn are Forest Ecology, Microfinance and Water system. In Forest Ecology class we went to Moundol Kiri to see the forest. That is also help me to think about the forest in Cambodia. Now Cambodia forest don’t have a lot because people keep cutting the forest or luxuri woods and sell to Vietnam and other country. This is help me to think if I learn in Forest Ecology class in the future I can help my country by give my education to the people that don’t know how to use the forest and tell that forest important to us. I think I can help my coutry by that stratergy. In Microfinance I studied about what people loan money for and what they need. When I learnt about microfinance I know that people like to loan the money for play games like Tong Tin (it a Cambodian game) and then I can help them by telling if we take the money for make a business it better than we take that money to play game. In water system class we learned about good water and bad water. This can help change my coutry becasue when I grow up i will give this knowledge to my friends and other people or make water filter for my people. I think Liger Learning Center help me and my country a lot.