In June 13 of 2017, it was my pleasure to go visiting and watching the Khmer Rouge Tribunal at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. It was my very first time to see this big kind of tribunal. Many Cambodian were there including monks, farmers, workers, and students above the age of 16. I was sitting in the back row watching the tribunal and I can see Mr. Khiev Samphan, a guy who have power during the regime, very clear through the glass where they have the tribunal going on. I didn’t expect to see him or hearing all of the terrible moment he did during the Khmer Rouge however the lawyers and the witnesses were attacking him, with their evidence. I was so happy that Cambodia is always trying to bring justice and fairness for their citizen that lost their family during the genocide. Even though I didn’t experience the genocide, but I can still imagine all of the pains and sorrow that Cambodian faced during that period of time. The memorable of watching this tribunal has encouraged me to learn more and be the positive change agent for my country.
Way back to December 2, 2016, I was in a team that went for competing the VEX Robotics Competition in Taiwan. This competition is two days long; many teams were in high school level just like us. Many of them were so competitive, they just want to keep winning and make their opponent want to loose them. In team my job was to do fundraising for the team, to get the budget for our group to travel to Taiwan. It was our first time to go for this VEX competition and many of us have been feeling misgiving for the first time we arrived. At the end of the two days competition, we won Judges Award that our team has worked together and collaborate well together over the course of two days and this award should be giving to our team that we showed so much appreciation and determination on our work. It was a great experience to see young generation from everywhere all over the world involve in such competition and that this is like a beacon that leads them to have a brighter future. The experience from this competition is to be able to fight with the other team and not to feel overwhelming before the competition start so that everyone can feel the confidence inside our team core.
Check this video out to see what had we done at Taiwan, this video created by, Kimseng.
The first step of stepping my foot on to the territory and the land of S-21, had just made my heart bounced off. The sadness and sorrow just came into my heart, and the feeling of missing was started to happen. Before I went to the S-21, I thought that it will be just a normal place or maybe similar to the Killing Field, but all of those thought and expectation had shift and everything change. This is not a simple place or a high school or a prison that is for keeping the prisoners, however it was more than what I expect. Every floor in all the building were filled with pain, blood and all of the evidence of this massive genocide. Chea Chan Pou were the man who talked in the audio and explain the whole tour. During Khmer Rouge Regime he was 13 years old. 12000 people were contribute to the area and only 12 of them survive. The white 14 graves outside by the front of the building were the last 14 who died during the day that the regime were fall and in addition to not making any noise to let the new government hear the sound of the gun they uses the knife to kill them.
I also learned a new quote that stated by the people that talked about S-21 and it said “A place where we can go in but no longer can come out” It very hurtful, even a small yell they couldn’t even said it, if otherwise they will be punish or torture by the soldiers. As a younger generation, who had never experience and see the real things that was happened, I felt very sorry to all the people, nothing can compare. It a very powerful history for Cambodia. I learned so much things, and that I really hope that from today until the end of the world this horrible genocide or war will ever happen to Cambodia or to the world ever again. As also, this is one of the most heart touching place that I’ve ever been and that I learn so much just from visiting there and all of these beautiful memories will always be in my heart and I will carry on to the future and tell the world how hurt Cambodia is?
S-21 a place where I can feel sorrow – Where I can touch the pain – When I can smell the past – How I particularly see the picture – What I can finally hear the experience!
The last 14 people who died the last day of Khmer Rouge fall.
Over the past seven weeks, I have been participating in an exploration called Liger Digital Currency. It was such a great experience from learning to code, designing and problem-solving with my team members and my facilitator(Alli). There has been some small problem during the time I was coding in class. Basically, the problem is not about the communication with my team but it is about the way I code is that sometimes I am having some syntax problem or sometimes I was writing a wrong code, so I needed sometimes to find my problem and changed it. It was a great experience for me to join in this exploration. Presently I am still working on designing the web page but my goal is to finish it before my Christmas break.
When I was young, singing has always been in my mind. I always sing whenever I have free time or relaxing time from learning. My mom always told me, “Don’t sing too much, spend sometimes to learn and memorizing my topics that I had learned from school.” I always listen to my mom, but the only thing is even those I am learning, I still keep singing because it make me feel very peaceful and relaxing. Time had past, I can’t be young anymore and so now, I participated in an exploration called “Hidden Voices”. Our intention in this exploration is to preserve Khmer endangered songs and music which most of the people now didn’t know or even heard about. Our team went to 3 different places to gather and interview as many people as possible to get all the hidden songs.
These is a film that was created by a woman from Australia, her name is Belinda, she help us to create this film to explain about our trip and how we wanted to really help Cambodia:
This is Advanced Coding exploration. In this exploration we work with Michal from Poland to work on the economy game. Our goal for this exploration is to finished up the codes for the game and come up with a good code and design for the game. To come up with this game we got the idea from our Cambodian Economy book. As my own experience in this exploration I am working together with three girls on User Interface. User Interface is what the user see the first thing the app or the program. There are three teams which are Tutorial team which they are making a video to show how to play this game. Another team is working on Data Based which they learned to calculate the value and the money put in the game. And the last but not least is Engine team. They work to build up the Java script code and put everything together so that the game be had for us to play. Such a fun time and good experience for learning coding with Michal. Only 7 weeks that we work together and we almost had accomplished the goal so this is a great result to know about for this exploration.
Over the past seven weeks, I learned in an exploration called Entrepreneurship which is a year long plan project. This project is also teaching all the students to start up their own chilli sauce business. Every members in my team got own job and to get the job we need to write the Job Application Form so that we all can choose to do the job we like and passionate about. There are 4 big jobs 1. Legal Team, which is a team that researching and learning about the legal stuff such as how to register our business and how to get the health certificate and others certificate for the business. 2. Out Reach, the goal for this team is marketing the product and how to outreach our business to others people around us. 3. Bottle and Label, this is a team who’s needed to find the right bottle, labels and logo for the product. 4. Product Development, this team is learning about the recipe of the sauce and finding the right recipe for our chilli sauce and develop our sauce. I think all of the jobs are very important and what I like to do. Unfortunately, I can choose only one so that others students can also have the jobs. My role for htis exploration is Product Development. My two friends (Sreynith and Sreyneang) and I had been working very hard and doing a lot of communication with so many people to get the right recipe and what others people want. There are so many things that I learnt from this exploration such as being efficient on managing the time to cook and also learning the curiculumn. This is one of my favourite exploration because I had studied what I want to learn before. In this exploration we also went to MooMoo Farm the first diary cow factory in Cambodia, to learn from them about how did they start up their business and how did they register their business. From this trip I did get to learn so many things and get to see the diary cow.
Over the past seven weeks I learned lots of new things about Marine life and Marine Ecosystem from Karen and Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC). It was a really big powerfull experience to go to Koh Seh to meet with many new people and learn new things about Marine ecosystem around the island. This was my first time to go to an island to study about the Marine Life at Koh Seh(Kep). When I first arrived, I was thinking to myself that I was not safe at all and I am frightened because there are many new people that I never known before. But soon after I got used to it and I wasn’t even thinking about it. I have traveled many times on a boat but this trip, to the island, was the best trip ever. This trip made me know who I am and what should I do to represent myself as I am one of the Cambodian citizens. Also this is my best experience that I never have before, this trip taught me many new thing from the Marine Ecosystem around the island there at Koh Seh (Kep). Before I never cared or even thought about Marine Life, but when I came on the trip, Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC) taught me a lot of new topics and new kind of organism that I never thought of before. When I first saw the ocean I felt fresh and peaceful but then I felt sad for the ocean that our people have used the ocean to be the road ways for the ships or boats to transport people from one place to another and export the product to many places all around the world. But some people take this advantage to make into the disadvantage for the ocean. Right now many people are doing a lot of fishing and using a lot of technology to do fishing, they also use trawling to do fishing. This is a very bad things that we all have give back to the ocean. My favorite things that I have learned in this trip is that I had studied about the Reef Introduction. According to what I had learned from Amick is that there are 1000 Coral Reef species. Do you know why coral reef are important?? The reason that coral reefs are important is because they provides the food for other organisms, 33% of the amount of coral reef is fish habitat. Coral reefs protect 20% of the world’s coast. After I went there I changed my mind about the marine life. I think that people in Cambodia should be conserving the ocean and trying to keep it sustainable by not doing illegal fishing.
So as soon as the people stop doing the illegal fishing and trying to conserve the ocean, like what MCC is doing right now, Cambodia will be a wonderful country with more biodiversity in the ocean. This positive impact will also give a positive effect on our economy the more we stop doing the bad thing more tourism will be increase more and more. My best memory and best experience are, first is to go scuba diving and snorkeling in the ocean to see the organism under the ocean. The second one is to meet new people that participate together to help change Cambodia. These things make me felt hopeful for my country and Cambodian people for the future.
Also we’ve been working really hard to finished one professional proposal that talk about our exploration and convince our director to allow all the students to do a year long plan project about Marine Conservation in Cambodia. In the feasibility I was written about Proposed Solution.
Read this to understand about the solution of the Fishermen in Cambodia:
Proposed Solution
Algal farming could be one solution for an alternative livelihood for illegal fishermen in Cambodia. Algal farming is the cultivation of algae that can grow in brackish, salt or polluted water. The products that are made from algae are the natural solutions to energy, food, economy and climate challenges that are facing the whole world today. In fact, many algae, both micro and macroalgae (seaweeds), are already used in food products. Algae reproduces rapidly and needs only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to grow.
Algae are known to be one of the longest term sustainable sources of biomass and oil, food and other products. According to the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Agriculture and Environment 2012, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Russia, Philippines, Korea, Japan, Italy, Chile and Taiwan are the top ten exporters of marine products, which includes fish and algae farming. Presently, the algae industry is using science and technology to increase the algae products into markets growth. So this is an exciting opportunity for Cambodia.
Vietnam, a bordering country, is one of the top ten algae products exporters in Asia. Since 1984 to present the world production of marine algae has grown 119%. Large-scale algae farming are in the Asian countries, because there is a high demand for marine product. According to the Economics of Adaptation To Climate Change, in 2008 the aquaculture production in Vietnam was valued at 33 million VND which was a 6.6% increase of the national GDP. As reported by Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of Vietnam, during the last two decades, there was a rapid growth in the aquaculture sector.
Algal farming could be an alternative solution for illegal fishermen because in Asia algal products are in demand. Vietnam has a similar marine ecosystem to Cambodia and they have good algal farming strategies. They are also a really big algal products exporter so Cambodia can communicate with them to learn more about algal farming. If Vietnam, a bordering country, is successful, Cambodia can also do that too.
Sousdey! Welcome to our Hydropower Generator Exploration. We are three students that had create an exploration called Hydropower Generator In Cambodia. Our group is learning about the hydropower in Cambodia and also the basic thing about hydropower and the important part about hydropower. Do you know what is hydropower? Hydropower a type of renewable energy contained in flowing water from the resevior or the river to make into the electricity.
Our goal for this exploration is to undersand the big idea about the hydropower and create one hydropower generator model at our school. At the end of this exploration we all will understand about hydropower and share to the other people at sharation time.
This is an exploration that learned about Cambodian Economy. We are the nine students from The Liger Learning Center who are the first students ever to write a book about the Cambodian Economy. Our team working really hard and reasearch a lot to find the information of each sector in the book. The Cambodian Economy book will be distribute to most of the secondary goverment schools in Cambodia. We spent almost a whole year to plan and write about this book. To get the information for the book, all of the students in Liger help our group to go on a field trips to learned and interviewed some of the people that work in the sectors that had in our book. As an example in our book had one sector that talk about Tourism, so 5 of Liger students including the members from the Cambodian Economy book exploration went on a day trip to Plantation Hotel to learn about there hotel and also ask them what they about tourism in Cambodia. Some of Liger students went on the over night trip to Kep and Kompot learn about many different kind of sector in Cambodia such as Crab seller, Fishery, Salt farm, Hotel, Kompot Peper and Bird nest factory. Over all I am very proud of myself that I can be one of the author for this book. Thank to Jeff that create this exploration if we don’t have this exploration I tink I will don’t know anything about the Economy in Cambodia. I am very appreciate to all of the members who help to write the book we all are increadible students and I think we are the first students ever to write the Cambodian Economy book.
Meeting with Minister of EducationCambodian Economy Book
