Category: 2017-2018

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Visiting New Hope For Cambodian Children

On the 2nd of March, my exploration group visited NHCC organization which located in Kampong Speu province which its mission is to help those children who have HIV positive to have place to live, food to eat, place to learn and to have a better family where everyone is welcome.

All the children living in this organization are HIV positive. However, this place is where they can build themselves up  to become the changer of their country. 

We met Kathy, the founder of the organization. She took us around the campus and tell us stories in which it was a great time spent for learning the experience of people living with HIV. 

The area was in a total 8 hectares. Students there were growing plants to sell to the middle men and to get money to buy what they wishing for.  

"All children here, is raise to become bosses!" - Kathy

One of the story that affect me the most was to hear from a girl named Kolayan. She is a 14 year-old-girl which her birthday was on the 5th of February. I said a Happy Birthday to her and I can see how happy she is to hear it. I asked her a question, which I also asked her the permission to ask whether it is appropriate to ask or not and she said it okay and I can ask. Therefore, I asked her a question which was, “Do you afraid of your surrounding when you go back home to visit your family?” I was so shocked to hear her answer and she told me that. “I am not afraid anymore because I rarely visit my house and when I go home once in a while, people thinks that the HIV have gone from my body already, then they just don’t care and I also don’t really care about it as well because I think that just let what they thinks keep going and because I don’t think they need to know or analyse whether I am an HIV positive person or not .” Her words surprised me because my thought was that she going to said she afraid but she was telling me that she wasn’t at all and that’s what I want to hear because those positive words are what cheer those people up to be strong.

I believed these kids are strong and through helping them
to learn to get good education, those kids will find 
their passion one day, in which they should know that
they an important part for the country development.
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A Story of Valentina Tereshkova

This is Valentina Tereshkova, originally a textile worker from the ancient of town of Yaroslavl, also known as the Hero of the Soviet Union. She is currently 80 years old, and was the first woman to travel into space with Vostok 6 mission, during June 13, 1963. Valentina was born on March 6, 1937 in Soviet Russia. In 1953 Valentina attended and graduated with distinction from Zhukovsky Military Air Academy. When she was 22, she was very interested in parachute jumping, a skill that prepared her for the cosmonaut (Russian Astronaut) selection. Nikita Khrushchev, the Leader of Soviet Premier, selected four women to be trained for one special program called woman-in-space in the Soviet Air Force. With hardwork and passion and love for the program, out of the four women, Valentina was the only woman who completed the space mission and earned the opportunity to travel into space. In 1977 Valentina received a doctorate (Highest degree awarded by the university) in engineering major.

“The first woman to travel in space, she called out, “Hey sky, take off your hat. I’m on my way!” as the craft took off.” She was only 26 years old when she completed her mission in 1963, taking 70.8 hours to orbit the Earth 48 times. Meaning that she has taken 48 times to travel in the path that revolving around the Earth in which under influence of the gravitation. As she returned from the space mission of flying from the Earth 20,000 feet above and down, Nikita Khrushchev (the Leader of Soviet Premier) gave her the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union because of her braveness to be the first woman to travel into space, orbiting the Earth 48 times while the first man to travel into space, Yuri Gagarin, only orbited the Earth 36 times. With that being said, before she even took off from Earth she also provided hope to inspire Russian girls, “They too could rise, through the Soviet system to greatness.”

Consequently, because of her commitment in the space mission, she was chosen to be a member of the Communist Party and as the representative for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) for which she participated in many international events, as well as United Nations Conferences for the International Women’s Year in 1975. From 1966 to 1974 she became a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1974 to 1989, and during 1986 to 1987, Valentina became the head of the Soviet Committee for women. During 1969 to 1991 she was  one of the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. After many active years in space and politics, in 1997, she retired from the Russian Air Force and the cosmonaut corps by presidential order.

Valentina constantly got support from various men in her life, for example, her dad(Vladimir Tereshkov, the war hero), Nikita Khrushchev(the Soviet Premier) and many other men involved in her career, which helped motivate her to become as a cosmonaut at young age and is what allowed her to become the representative for USSR. The support she received wasn’t just from men, but also from women who were on her side to cheer for her. Everyone surrounding her played an important part in helping her get into a STEM field, and these people are a great model of supporters who don’t don’t discriminate and limit those women from pursuing for their greatness.

The support that she received from everyone surrounding her is a perfect example of a community helping the other female engineers or younger generation, especially girls but also boys, to see the worth of doing what we love to do. People will always get different reward and love from different people, but by approaching somebody who wants to help, who is invested in what we do and has faith in us, is one way that may lead us to the success destination. Valentina wasn’t born in a  rich family where she could have anything she demanded,  but she was born in a family filled with love and support, which helped bring her to the success she got as a cosmonaut, engineer and politician.

Author: Sovannou Pich

 

Work Cited:

NASA, NASA, starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level1/tereshkova.html.

Bridger, Sue. “The Cold War and the Cosmos: Valentina Tereshkova and the First Woman’s Space Flight.” SpringerLink, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1 Jan. 1970, link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230523432_12.

Revolvy, LLC. “‘Valentina Tereshkova’ on Revolvy.com.” Trivia Quizzes, www.revolvy.com/topic/Valentina Tereshkova&item_type=topic.

“Valentina Tereshkova.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 1 Mar. 2016, www.biography.com/people/valentina-tereshkova-022516.

Photo Source: https://ukamsat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/valentina-tereshkova-image-credit-rsc-energia.jpg

 

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Meeting with UNAIDS Cambodia

During 13th of February, a group of students including myself, went to UNAIDS in Phnom Penh to find out more information about Cambodia current status about HIV/AIDS. We met a lady named Vladanka Andreeva who is the country director of UNAIDS in Cambodia. 

Source: http://www.unaids.org

We spent about two hours discussing this issue and listening to her presentation about the work of UNAIDS. UNAIDS was established during 1996. The goal for UNAIDS is to accomplish the public health threat by 2030 using their sustainable development goals. 

From what we talked, Vladanka told us that about 71 thousands of Cambodia’s population is currently living with HIV, and out of that number 35 thousands of them are women. 81 % of them are needed treatment in Cambodia.

Source: Population living with HIV – http://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/cambodia

There are 5.1 million in Asia and the Pacific and 1.8  million of them are women. Unprotected sex are most likely to be the big cause of aid. UNAIDS is progress towards the goal of 90-90-90 targets, which they are trying to get no baby born with HIV positive which they can have a legal barrier. 46.9 million USD has been funded by the international to Cambodia.

UNAIDS also create, what’s called a Community Based Project HIV which is from: 

  • Peers to peers 
  • Education program
  • By travel to the place

December 1st is the World Aid’s day. Aids is not a disease that can cure but it is a kind of syndrome.

Regarding to our talk, this type of disease remained one of the scariest diseases that everyone in Cambodia and the whole should know and need to taking care of themselves from getting it. If a person is having an HIV positive this mean that, the person can spread this HIV to others and in which he or she really needs to be careful and get treatment every day in order to stay healthy and live longer. A person living with HIV, aren’t mean that they are not a human, therefore, discrimination is not what everyone should react to those who have it.

This meeting was such a great experience where we learned so many new information and that that information is what helps us to better understand on Cambodia HIV current status data numbers. This also helps us to get prepared for making our final product for this exploration.

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Second Discovery on Dinosaur Footprint

On the 8th of February 2018, my team and I, traveled all the way up to Battambang with two Thai paleontologists to analyze the footprint that we have found at the site a while ago. 

Our project has come as a result that the prints or casts that we found during our first discovery were a Flute Casts. Meaning it was a cast that got affected by the river flows that pushing it through those stones which affect the stones to turn it that way.

 

It is a pleasure, to have our two Thai paleontologists (Romain and Tida) to help us through with the three days of 12 hours workshop session and a field trip this week.

Even though the result of our project wasn’t what we all were expected, however, we are still feel optimistic on keep on moving forward with this project and will try to raise awareness on Dinosaurs in Cambodia!

 

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Vex Robotics Competition – Beta-B

This is my second time to be apart of the Vex Robotics Competition. The first experience was scary, but the second was absolutely unforgettable and memorable of my first time having to compete with all girls members of our team.

February 3rd was the competition date. It was such an incredible experience where we met about 19 others different teams from Thailand, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan. We were one of the teams from Liger whose chosen to represent our school and our country, Cambodia. 

The game this year is called Vex cone in the zone, meaning we are earning points by putting the cones on to mobile goal or stationary or by putting mobile goals into different point zone. The game wasn’t that easy since that was our experience. 

We were having 1 practice round and 5 qualifying matches. During the qualifying matches, we won in a total of three games and lost by small points in two games. In which we were ranked to be in the 11th placed out of 21 teams.

However, a team from Kazakhstan and a team from Thailand was honored to invite us to be their alliance in which they were the top 1st place and 2nd place of the whole competition, therefore we automatically got into the semi-final. Because of winning the semi-finalized match, we got into the final round and in which we won the whole game with our two alliances. 

By the end of the competition, we won one of the trophies which were awarded on the winning three teams of the whole competition. This one experience has taught me and show me the importance of technology and how have technology like the robot could help us, students learn.

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Grants Writing of Geography in Cambodia Book

Over the past school years, first cohort students have published many books, two of those books were the Cambodian Economy and Wildlife Animals in Cambodia. Currently, the second cohort students (Junior Students) are working on and is planning to publish the book called Geography in Cambodia.

The creativity of junior’s works on their Cambodia Geography trip.

So as part of my project, we are working on writing the grants application describing this project, to apply for the grants from a foundation in Australia whose team is always giving out money once the year. This is not a senior project, therefore all the stories and editing of the book will be in our junior cohort.

Junior’s work on each province they learned.

We believe that by completing this grants and sent out to the people at the foundation, will help junior to be motivated on keep on working and spread the words about this book and be the first book to publish about The Geography in Cambodia.

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Virtual Research Skill Tips!

Research skill has been one of the fun, enjoyable and creative expertise where I learned so many tricks in which help me a lot to become a better researcher. This isn’t about hacking Google or different sources to get the information we want. 

But what research is actually mean is, when you actually run out of idea and don’t know something and you need to know about it, so you need to find the inside story about it. 

There are different kind of research a Scientific research and a Literature research. 

  • Scientific research is you doing your own research and do the data collection.
  • Literature research is when you do reading studies/accounts from others people.

So, why do you want to do research? That’s because:

  • To learn more about the topic
  • To gather evidence to build an argument
  • To make connections between one idea and one another
  • To contribute something new to the “scholarly conversation”

When you are doing research, do you think it hard to find the information you want directly? 

This are some tips that will help you! Are you ready? : 

1. Using five Ws (When, What, Where, Why, Who) and one H (How) to ask about the topic you want to research.

2. Using Boolean Operators – AND, OR, and NOT:  Cambodia and Southeast Asia

3. Using Boolean Searching – Phrase searching:  “Liger Leadership Academy”

4. Using credible source such as: .gov, .edu, || warning: Don’t trust Wikipedia but it can be the first link to start your research.

5. Using Google Scholar, it is free and you may get what you looking for!

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AP Computer Science

As part of the Expertise classes, I have applied to be one of the member learning in AP Computer Science class. I used to do a little bit of coding which is in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and a little bit of JavaScript programming languages. In Computer Science, they have what’s called a programming language which is a formula or a language that the programmers or the computer scientists write to communicate with the computer and tell the computer what to do. Part of these, Java is the language that we learn in the AP Computer Science class. 

public static void main(String args[]){
 Scanner myScanner = new Scanner(System.in);
 
 System.out.println("What is your name?");
 String name= myScanner.nextLine();
 
 System.out.println("Hello," + name);
These lines of codes above were one of the practices in the course. Those lines of codes are for the computer to ask the user, what is their name? and let the user input their name in, then the computer print. 

Coding is hard and requires a lot of patients. If there are any syntax errors or missing some kind of codes like, semicolon, hence, the computer won’t be able to analyze and so the program won’t be running. That is why programmers are needed to have an organization where they could understand their codes that goes in order. However, coding has brought programmers in connecting them with the computer very easily, instead of doing really complicated codes, we can write short simple codes and let it print a piece of artwork. Just like the example of the codes below: 

System.out.println("/^^^^^\\");
System.out.println("-------");
System.out.println("|      |");
System.out.println("|_|^|_|");

What do you see in this four lines of codes?
- Answer this question in the comment box below: 
 1. A Star
 2. A House
 3. A Bear
 4. I could see four lines of codes.

By the end of this course, some students are further practice for the AP Computer Exam during May. I am one of them whose will be taking the big exam. It has been a lot of challenging to learn this new kind of programming language but by not giving up on the course may lead me to a good result.

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How have sports effects me, as a person?

Sports has been one of the most inspiring activities and subject for me as a student. When I was young, I never have imagined how has sports were apart of changing my life. Liger has inspired many female students like me, to involve more in sports and learn to understand how sports acts an important role in the gender gaps.

My first thought was that I am a girl and I won’t be able to learn and make it and there is no way that I can be strong just by doing sports. But no, after a few years later I figured out that I was wrong. Sports has brought me many opportunities and great life lessons.

Without Frisbee training, I wouldn’t be able to travel abroad to have the international championships. Without basketball training, I wouldn’t know how to dribble and working in a team with my others friends in school. Without football, I wouldn’t know how football system is like.

Sports has affected me in a way where I noticed myself that I am able to realize the potential and the energy as an athlete. It not late to learn, because you always have time to make yourself learn and enjoy the new experience of physical activities.

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Liger Digital Currency Launching

After every seven weeks of the exploration, the students will be then going to present about there final product to different groups of people. Liger Digital Currency, has been my most and long term continuation project, and I love it. So far, this exploration has been run for three round in which I was in all of the three. Since I was in all of the rounds, I can see how much I have grow from this one and specific project and understand much clearer about the project as far as getting  another challenges. 

During the 27th of November, I was presenting, the growth of Liger Digital Currency and how has these project becoming. We has successfully launch our LDC and senior students are currently using it. This project will also be a part of helping to secure the Liger cashing system in which the students now can save there money with worry. I am so proud of what my team has achieved and the effort that we put in as a team.