Category: 2015-2016

In the presence, Cambodia is still a developing country, so there are always things to be changed to a next and better level. Though my eyes and what I had been taught, education, environment and so on are still big problems to be solve.
This school year, I was apart of five Explorations. One of those was Phnong Indigenous Minority. We created a book about Phnong’s lives because as our country is more developed, their lives also change, so we would like to help preserve their culture by creating a book, which includes their livelihoods, culture etc. Another one was Project Based Learning. We want to know if the government school students are interested in the Project Based Learning or not. So we had created projects for them to work on and they required to create a water filter out of natural resources such as sand and coal. When went back to check what they had got. We could see that they finish it on time, their idea was creative and the quality of the water from the filter was awesome. They told us that they like this Project Based Learning curriculum a lot because they get to practice in real life not just learning the theory from the book. Besides, when we got the answer from this school, we told the result to the next group. The next group had worked with a school in Kratie to continue this work, but I wasn’t apart of that group. That school in Kratie was suggested by the Minister of Education. Another Exploration was Entrepreneurship. Our mission was to create our own chill sauce with our own label, names, making our own product and doing our own marketing. I was in the marketing group. Finally, we got the label ready and our name is Cambodian Dynamite! Last but not least, my last Exploration of the year was Coding! This Exploration was for those that are interested in learning about it. So we took a test and I passed it, so I got to be apart of this Exploration. Our mission was to create an application that is related to economy. Me and another three members were in the Engine Team. We used lots of Javascript to make the application works. Finally, we can do it!
I feel really great to be in these Exploration, because I can be apart of change in Cambodia. This year, I was helping in education sector, where I helped to introduce Project Based Learning program to the government school students and they were interested, so we can give idea to the minister that this curriculum might help students to be more interested in learning. Secondly, in the Phnong Exploration, I had published a book about their lives. I think this might help them to their new generations to know about what their culture used to be in the past. The Chilli sauce Exploration. I was making a Cambodian product, which made by Cambodian kids and using many of the famous Cambodian ingredients. Coding was my last Exploration, but it’s an amazing one. I didn’t like coding much, but after this Exploration I feel like “Coding is amazing”! I could never believe myself that I could learn how to program an application and understand in a deeper level in technology! There were also other Cambodian boys and girls learning with me as well, so I think they are also apart of change in Technology when they could understand even deeper than now, they can help to create new things out of technology!
This year, I was in three, huge competitions. I had this special opportunity to go to Singapore for Robotics competition and the theme for this year is Trash Trek. I had created a commercial about trash in Cambodia to submit in the competition and our group were in the 2nd runner up for creative solution! Another big part of the competition was to program our robot to do what the competition required us to do. They had a competition board and our robot have to follow what they required with the board. It was a great experience to be on the plane for the first time ever in my life and also to visit one of the developed countries in Asia. The same video was also submitted in the “I Am a Role Model” competition, which was created by the Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen. We need lots of likes from other people to be in the top ten winners, and my video won the vote. So I was in the top ten and got this special opportunity to get a certificate and other prizes from the Cambodian Prime minister, Hun Sen at his work place. It was an amazing experience in my life because I could only see him in the TV, but that I saw him in real life, which was so great! Another big one was the Phnom Penh Youth Film Festival (PPYFF). My partner, Marary and I wrote a ghost movie titled “Haunted House”. We filmed the movie at night with some helps from our facilitators and from our friends. I did the editing and our movie was submitted in the competition. We got two prizes on our movie! Marady got a prize as Best Actor and we both got a prize as Best Director.
Since then, Marady and I had a plan that we might want to make more movies next year. We also feel that we like lots of filming staff. This year is an amazing year for me because I got to do lots of extraordinary things! As a Cambodian and that I got to do all these things. Besides, I did some works to help Change Cambodia this year, besides as a Cambodian and I got opportunities to improve myself, it was a part of great change in life too as a young Cambodian!