Category: Changing Cambodia

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Changing Cambodia and Myself

Changing Cambodia doesn’t have to be big, but all of the small things that you do everyday could also be a change. Being one of the students in the Liger Leadership Academy is a really significant opportunity to make a change in myself, my country or perhaps the world. I was born and raised here in my country, Cambodia. I do not wait for someone to change or wait until I become an adult and change, but I am the one who makes a change in this developing country, the Kingdom of Cambodia. So, the first step towards anything and everything starts from you and you only. 

Liger is an experiential, project-based learning school. This project-based learning is enhanced with intensive activities that involve student immersion in real-world experiences outside of the classroom named “Exploration”. There are my expeditions in 2019: 

OutDoor Leadership Exploration

Throughout the journey of learning in this exploration, I’ve learned so many things and have also made some positive impacts on Nature and the Environment. Nature is very important in our lives. Without nature, our lives are just nothing. All of the people around the world know the importance of nature, but because of the mindset thinking only about their own benefits, people started to cut down trees. By cutting down those trees, it killed many animals lives. Wildlife plays an important role in balancing the environment and provides stability to different natural processes of nature. I’ve learned that wild animals can inspire people to lead a sustainable lifestyle. They can invoke feelings of sympathy and compassion, causing people to be conscious of the damaging effects of their lifestyles. Every animal is very gentle if we are nice to them. Learning the importance by yourself first before telling others to do so is really important because if you are not aware of yourself and want others to change and be aware of wildlife then there is no point at all. And when you keep learning and upgrading yourself everyday, you gain knowledge and wisdom to know why you need to change in order to tell others to change this and that. I’ve spread the knowledge and understanding about wildlife to other people in my community because I want people to take care of what we already have instead of thinking about their own benefits and waiting for the end to come, and to also share what they learned from me as well. 

Making the place cleaner than what it was is also one of the changes and positive impacts. Because of people’s laziness, they like to leave trash behind after fulfilling their own stomach without thinking that, that one trash affects thousands of lives. As a whole group, we picked up and clean the environment every time we see trash. Ten pieces sound like a nominal number, but it’s scaled immensely when the collective power of a group of travelers joins in. With a group of just 15 travelers, the 10 pieces quickly turn into 150. And if there’s another group of 15 travelers at the same place the next week, that’s another 150 pieces of litter. It soon adds up. When the community sees visitors to their home collecting litter, it encourages them to be responsible for their waste disposal. With this understanding, they can lobby for better litter disposal methods for their communities, and they also become less likely to throw litter into their environment themselves. Just picked up some trash, you became good a role model of the world, not only that, but you will also make the environment cleaner that could bring positive impacts to millions of wildlife. Ten pieces of litter can be collected in under 60 seconds; anyone can do it, and it costs nothing at all. 

Being a good role model for the community to see and follow is really important because it affects the lives of young people in our society. Those young people are the future of the country, so if surrounded them are great people, then they might become a change agent in the future that will bring more positive impacts toward our country and make it even more development.

Another project that I made a change in both myself and the country is called “Technovation”

In the last two year, it has been an amazing year learning the Technovation and publishing the real app to solve the real problem in Cambodia. I found out that, I didn’t do a great job on this project, I didn’t focus, I didn’t listen, and I didn’t get the ideas of what is it really about. I felt regret about it so much that if there is another opportunity, I really want to join it again and change myself from the girl without light to a shining and glowing star. And finally, I did it. I join this project again and I was a programmer for the app. I learned and learned until I can make the app runs smoothly. As a whole team of five, arguments happened a lot during the process of learning because we all have different ideas and opinions. But, we fought through it. Collaboration makes the wall break down into pieces. Without those arguments, this team won’t be successful today. To me, successful does not mean winning the competition, but it’s how we collaborate, associate, consolidate, and all of those conversations and arguments. Tears have been dropped after hearing that we were not chosen to be in the National pitch, but all those hard work, determination, perseverance, and the passion of making a change in Cambodia still remains in your heart and mind. Even though the sky was dark and frown that I couldn’t see anything at first, but after those tears have dropped, the sky becomes clear that I could see the light of the sun again. The light the sun awake me and realized me that I did fulfill my dream. I did focus, I did listen, I did read, I did think, I did help my teams, I did talk, I did give ideas, I did overcome the arguments between mates, I did learn how to code on both IOS and Android, and I didn’t just learn how to program the app, but I also learned about life. What did I learn about life? Nobody wants to lose in the competition, winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. No one wins all the time. No one. To me, to lose is truly to win. I learned a tremendous amount from losing! I learn from failures, mistakes, adversity, and setbacks. How I begin to win is by moving forward with a positive attitude, strong work ethic and overcoming my feelings by learning how to be Present in it, Tell someone I trust about my feelings to release it out, Enjoy what I already have, Think about what really matters in life, and Focus on something new and move on. There is nothing attractive about bitterness, but I can get on with attracting what I want. I didn’t rush myself to move on, whenever I feel ready and it’s time to move on, I MOVE ON. And I did move on and walk with a clear mindset to a place of wonder. Not only that I change myself, but I have made a big impact on Cambodia by making an app to preserve Khmer culture through writing more Khmer poems. 

I believe in the quote that says “To change your life, you have to change yourself. To change yourself,  you have to change your mindset” quotes by Anonymous. If I don’t even change myself, how am I going to change my country?. What I can do to change myself is to hunt deep inside, deep into my corners and closets. I find my prejudices and I challenge them. I find my mountains and scale them. I find every darkness in me and figure out how to generate light in. I found out that, learning about myself and try to change it in a way that will make the darkness disappear is what makes me as a future of Cambodia achieve an ambition of changing Cambodia. 

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How I change Cambodia

Our world is changing every day and as people in Cambodia, we also have to change to catch up with the modernization of the rest of the world to make our country better. Being a student at the Liger Leadership Academy has changed my mind to think of creating change in Cambodia. From what I have learned and what I have done in this school, I think these are the things that I change my country so far.

Technovation

To change our own country is not easy, but if you can change it little by little, our country will develop more and more.

The Liger Leadership Academy has given an opportunity to all of the juniors girls to participate in Technovation. Technovation is one of the programs that allow girls to participate more in technology and to learn the necessary skills to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders.

I am one of the students who had the opportunity to participate in Technovation because I believe that girls should be more involved in Technology, especially coding. Girls who code, Boys who cook. We went to Phounment school every Sunday to study and learn more about coding. Before we get into coding, we have to learn how to access our app idea first. For example: learn how to identify a problem in our community and create a mobile app solution to address that problem. We also learned how to communicate the ideas and translate them into a fully launched business. We have only three months to do it and only on Sundays. For those three months, my team came up with an idea to create an app called Farmer’s Market. Farmer’s Market is an app that solves the poverty problem in Cambodia. Did you know that there are many people are farmers in Cambodia? They grow their plants by not using chemicals, but the problem is that they don’t have a market to sell their agricultural products such as vegetables and fruits. Our app will help those farmers. When farmers download our app, they can post information about their fruits or vegetables that they want to sell. When any farmers post the information, the customers and people that use our app will see and if they want to buy something, they can contact the seller by phone number. How can our app help people?  Our app is like a market, where farmers can sell their product any time they want. They don’t have to go to the physical market and search for customers themselves. Some farmer’s farm can be really far from the market, so they can’t go to sell their product easily. If they use our app, they can just post it and the customers will buy their product really easy.

Poverty is one of the biggest problems in Cambodia, but our app can help them. Farmer’s Market change farmers life.

Geography Trip ( How liger students change Cambodia )

For the first day, we have been to many places that are fascinating and beautiful. One place that I really interested in the most is in Kroches province which is Koh Trong Island. There are many special things about it. People that live on that Island said, the soil is really good with a lot of nutrient for plantation to grow. The plant that most of the people grow and the most valuable is pomelo. The pomelo in Koh Trong is really different from other pomelo that doesn’t grow on Koh Trong. It is more delicious and sweater that other pomelo.  We also had a chance to eat that pomelo. It tasted super delicious. I never ate that kind of delicious fruit before. After we went to Koh Trong to eat pomelo and collected the information, we went back to Kroches city. We stayed in a green guesthouse. That house is really beautiful and hygiene. When we went to the guesthouse, we didn’t take a shower and eat dinner yet, so we have to do it. After we took a shower, we went to eat dinner in a restaurant. The foods that we ate was so delicious with a good serve. Liger students are the only eater that cleaned and prepared everything that we ate, for example: we putted of all the dishes in order, cleaned the table, took the dishes to clean, prepared and cleaned everything on the table. It shows that, Liger students are really responsible for everything that they did, sensitive and helpful to people around them.  Even though we ate foods by paying money, but when we leave, we have shown a really respectful to the owner of the restaurant by saying “Thank you for the foods”. When we do those kind of things and leave by saying “Thank you for the foods”, the owner show her face expression by smiling and said “I really appreciate that”. This is Liger students. After eating, we went back to the guest house and make a discussion about the informations that we got. We worked with each other really hard, communicate with each other well and talk to each other nicely. When one of us did something wrong or make someone felt bad, we always talk to them and try to find solutions. We always keep the six core values in our mind in everytime we went outside or somewhere else. Those six core values are Integrity, ingenuity, stewardship, determination, optimism and appreciation. These core values are extremely meaningful to us because it is a part of our life. For the seven days of Geography, we have done a really good job and came back with a big smiling face because we have more informations to put in the book and have been to many places that we never seen before.

Robotic (EXPLORATION) Changing Cambodia

Robotic is one of my favorite exploration. The purpose of doing the exploration is to join the first lego league competition in Singapore. The topic of this competition is about Hydrodynamic which means we are going to use our robot to do some missions about water and give a presentation about water too. In this exploration, we don’t just study about robots and presentation, but we also learn how to communicate with each other. We only have seven weeks to do all of those things, but we were able to do it. During our exploration class, we found out that water is one of the problems in Cambodia and that there are two types of water that can affect people. One is the Contaminated water and the other is Arsenic. There are two teams of this exploration. I was part of one of the teams that was working on the Contaminated water. We see that Contaminated water comes from humans and factories. People throw their trash into water without thinking deep of how it will affect marine life and their life. Some people may  see trash on the water and rather than find ways to remove the trash from the water, they would throw more trash in instead. They think that “there is only a little bit of  trash in the water, so if I throw in one more trash, it will not make a difference”. Everything start from one. If people keep saying that, it will become a habit soon and the country will never further develop. There are trash bins where people can throw their trash in; don’t just throw trash in anywhere that you want because it can affect yourself too. Water is one of the many resources that humans need to survive, so if the water becomes contaminated, there won’t have be any clean water to drink. There are many kind of germs in contaminated water which can cause diseases. You can get many types of diarrheal diseases, including Cholera, and other serious illnesses such as Guinea worm disease, Typhoid, and Dysentery. All of those diseases are really dangerous and they cause 3.4 million deaths each year. So, if you want to stay alive, you shouldn’t throw your trash to water. Not only does throwing a trash can affect your life, but the wastes from the factory also make your water become contaminated, too. The wastes contain many bacterias that are dangerous. When you drink it, you can get diarrhea really easily. I hope that all of the factories around the world will find another way of keeping their wastes rather than release it to water since it can affect people life. Contaminated water also affects the marine life. Marine is a part of our life. Why? Because they provide important ecosystem services such as the provision of food, medicines, and livelihoods. They also support tourism and recreational activities around the world. Marine life can change our country too, so you shouldn’t throw the trash to water or release the wastes to water. Clean water is the best natural remedy that helps people. These are all of the pieces of information that we got to present to the judges in Singapore.  After the presentation, judges said, “We are proud of your presentation on how to solve the problems and present with your confidence ”. We were really excited when we heard those words from those judges mouths. We have a really confident in our team though sadly, we didn’t win, we said “Win is not what we want, but what we want is our communication and to experience and we will win later ” One special thing about our robotic team is that we are the only Cambodian team to went to represent about Hydrodynamics in Cambodia.