- How do I think about Change?
The most time that I can extend my mind to think about change is during travelling. I usually found myself looking out of the window of the car or observing from my motor. I usually observe what is the culture of Cambodian lifestyles and what are the problems that they are facing. Desire of helping them with their problems suddenly filled up my heart. I was just there, looking at their struggles and not able to do anything to help them. I wanted to do something in the future that would make this world more convenient to live, more efficient and be a better place. I found a huge contrast between Liger community and the real outside world. In Liger, it is like a community of values, wisdom, kindness, and wonderful characterized people. We have enough freedom to work and learn new things.. Students, Stuffs and Boards are valued equally. We understand and forgive each other with kindness. On the other hand, the outside community seems like a world full people who needs help with finding clean water, foods, clothes, jobs or schools to learn, etc. . For instant, one day when I was travelling from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh, I saw people who were frowning looking at other people eating. When I was riding my car in the city, I saw some uneducated kids selling flowers on the road at light stops. Back at my hometown, I saw families full of violence and shouting everyday. After those observing, I thought about what can I do to help change these problems?
Gender Theme (Literacy Class)
In our Literacy Essential class, we were learning about the theme of Gender. We discussed a lot of gender roles, equity and especially stereotypes that society drew for us. I found it complicated to discuss about this theme because there are too many rules or stereotypes for girls to follow as well as boys. It is all made by our society that all of us are living in. After this class, I started to understand and think more deeply into this theme and changed my perspective of gender. Before, I have a general concept of the differences between boys and girls. For instant, boys are the main worker for families and should not work at home and women are the housewives, etc. On the other hand, now, I understand that those are just what the general concepts of the society. We can start to change that now to help those people who are discriminated in gender roles.
- How did I raise awareness about necessary Change?
Khmer MUN: 2nd May 2018
Liger Leadership Academy has hosted the first Khmer MUN in Cambodia on the 2nd May 2018. It is a fabulous opportunity for me to share my ideas about gender equity and to change most people’s perspective towards Women Rights. There, I gave really positive ideas to support the topic “Women can be leaders.” In addition, my team has created a long and complex resolution with a lot of clauses to solve the problem and to make changes. During the event, the two teams, against and in favor discussed with each other to find a proper solution to the topic “Women can be leaders.” By doing this Model United Nation in Khmer, I can promote new ideas of how can women become leaders and join important roles in the government. I encouraged and raised a lot of facts to support the possibility of women rights in leadership roles.
World Story Exchange: 2017
World Story Exchange is a project that is made by Lindsay and Scott. They travel from all around the world and collect stories from various places, cultures and lifestyles and share it with other people, too. I was selected as a student to work on this project, too. In order to complete this project, students must first learn the basics of photography and filming. The second step is brainstorming ideas for the video that we are going to make. The video needs to give positive message or inspiration for the rest of the world to see. My video was “Education can give us power.” There, I introduced myself and give an inspiration about the power of education.
Here is a link to the website and my video
https://ligerstories.blogspot.com/p/education-can-give-us-power-by-angely.html
- How did I try to promote and encourage Change?
TEDx ISPP: November 26th, 2018
TEDx is a wonderful opportunity for me to start chasing my dream which is make positive changes to the world. At this event, I talked about “Protecting Cambodian Elephants”. There, I mentioned about the advantages of elephants in ecosystems, Cambodian Culture, Buddhism and how their populations have dwindled over the period of modern development. I tried my best to convince all of the audience to start helping to save those rare elephants by many ways. The first solution that they can use to save elephants is stop riding those elephants for entertainment. According to my research, there were several elephants that died in Vietnam because tourists rode on them for fun. In fact, there are many tourists that are riding these huge animals in Angkor Wat. The second way to help saving elephants is stop deforestation and plant more trees to create bigger habitats for elephants. The final solution is acting from your heart instead of for profits. If all of you love elephants, you must start to practice the past solutions and share the knowledge and understanding out to the world I was very satisfied of this opportunity because it gives me a chance to express my love of wild animals and my concept of preserving those endangered animals especially elephants. I wanted to make a community of support to preserve those rare animals and wildlife by spreading . Delivering a public and long talk is not an easy thing to do but it is worth the change of positive mindsets and lessons that needs to be shared. For viewing the video of my TEDx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scZxOUsLkGw
- How did I develop the possibility of Change?
Technovation Cambodia
I had been joining a program called Technovation for two years in a row (2017-2018). Technovation is a wonderful program which allows girls to involve more in technology and entrepreneurship field. We are required to develop an app in purpose to solve a problem in our community. We also have competed with other teams both national and global. In addition, we made a business plan for our revenue, users population, updating new versions for our app, etc.
As all of us can see, there is trash everywhere in Cambodia which is an exceedingly huge problem waiting to be solved. It can affect Cambodia’s tourism, economic and especially environment. Consequently, my team in 2017 named green world had decided to develop an app called Clean World to give more information about trash and environment to our citizens which let them to learn more about the benefits of dividing trash.
Our app can also motivate Cambodian citizens as well as tourists to help solve this problem together. Even Though the app is not in the market, we have made a prototype of an app to solve this problem. In addition, we have also raised awareness of change when we did the presentation in the mini pitch and national pitch.
Here is the link to our slide presentation:
This year, (2018) my team (Five Infinities) have created an app called MEP Center which stands for the word Mechanical, Electricity and Plumbing Center. It is an app that helps customers to find suppliers to go and fix their MEP problems and suppliers to find more customers to work with.
I am extremely proud of this app and we got a lot of support and positive feedbacks to it. My team has also gone to Iching Decoration company to get feedbacks and reflections and they ensured to use our app 100%. This is my first startup and I think this business is the most successful one I have had. It helps me to extend my ideas and creativity of solving problems in my community. Not only that, it is a huge step towards my dream of becoming a businesswoman. We have raised awareness of change during the two pitches (Mini Pitch and the National Pitch). The National Pitch presentations are judged be three judges who are Ms. Penhleak CHAN, Tech Innovation Consultant, Mr. Sopheakmonkol SOK, Chief Executive Officer at Codingate, and Ms. Sikieng SOK, Curriculum Developer for Saturday Kids. One thing that is really interesting is that there is always one judge in each pitch that had the same idea as our team which means that people are really struggling with this problem.
After putting all of our hard works and collaboration together, we are the first place winner team of the national pitch 2018.
After our presentation, there were to groups of reporters who were asking us to do interviews. Two weeks after the national pitch event, a tech company called Geeks of Cambodia wanted to do an interview with us, too. One question in common that they have asked our team is “What are some messages that you want to give to other girls in Cambodia?” My answer was always be “We would love to encourage all girls and females to participate more in technology and entrepreneurship field. Nowadays, our country needs more human resources in technology and entrepreneurship field in order to develop our country. We have experienced all struggles and one thing we found out is that THE STEREOTYPE IS NOT RIGHT! You have the strength to do everything you want and become anyone you wish to be. Girls can actually code a wonderful app and run a really successful business. We can do it girls! Come on and show your potential!
”My goal is to actually launch this app even though if we will not pass in the global competition because it is an extremely wonderful app that I think it must be in the market one day to make lives in Cambodia more efficient. When we have launched our app in the market and the expected number of users have reached, we have actually created a big change for Cambodia. If this app works well in Cambodia, I would love to launch it in other countries, too. This can help impact to become bigger and bigger.
For more information, here are the articles about our start-up application that are written based on our interviews from different sources including VOA, Geeks in Cambodia, Development Innovations, :
http://geeksincambodia.com/technovation-cambodia-the-journey-of-five-infinities/
https://www.voacambodia.com/a/cambodian-teams-through-to-mini-final-of-tech-challenge/4437175.html
Cambodian Geography Book:
(photos taken by: Phearum Sorn)
In this second year of school, the whole junior cohort is participating in a huge project to publish a book called Cambodian Geography Book. All of us went to trips to interview people throughout the country and to learn more about the Geography of Cambodia. During this trip, I have learned so much, both improving my own skills as well as knowledge and also experience new things from every place. We made a lot of changes during this trip especially on people we had interviewed. Our team had impressed most of the people by showing our true spirit of love for our country and the enthusiasm to keep our culture, religion and history. This is why we want to publish this thick book. We have changed the mindset of some of the people we have interviewed to love the country, too. In addition, we showed our appreciation for those information that we got from them no matter what it is. It made them feel like those information are valuable for the next generation and they might do something to save it.