I had gone on a trip for the Khmer Rouge project. Reading through articles and watch the videos was not enough to explain the truth of the history. So we had a trip to Siem Reap and Oddar Meanchey to interview the victims and the soldiers who worked for the Angkar. I went to the museum at Siem Reap that founded by one of the solider from the Angkar. I saw a lot of weapons, the weapon that caused the war and destroyed my country. So the guy who was a soldier was our tour guy, he guided us to Oddar Meanchey, the place where people buried Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) and Ta Mok. We interview a lot of victims there who has experienced the Khmer Rouge regime, I can imagine what was like to be a victim at that time. So after Ta Mok past away after we discovered the place the house turned into a museum, it was a huge house surrounded by the mood. It was a great experience to hear different perspectives from the soldiers and victims who experienced the regime, it even better for my understanding of Khmer Rouge after the trip.
TED Talk
Go toward my passion, make the change that needed to fix and applied my science knowledge to the world. I love science, I feel passionate about science, I cared about the effect of air pollution on our atmosphere and it’s finally time to change our habit to protect the planet and our next generation. As I already mentioned that I love science and public speaking so this year I was interested with TED Talk. 14 minutes of public speaking in front of a few hundred people were difficult, especially, it was my first time so I get a bit nervous at the first time. But this even taught me to calm down when I speak and one of my favorite part of the event was to engage with the audience, asking questions and dominate the whole theater.
“Be your own life and be responsible for your own work. Your dream will become true and this world will have no more troubles with air pollution if we take responsibility. “
Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge was a big part of Cambodian history, the regime happened for 3 years 8 months and 20 days. It was an unforgettable history that every single of us has to understand and learned from it. We could not do anything about it, besides, understand about our history and keep create changes in Cambodia. It was a sensitive project where we have to understand the misery that Khmer Rouge did it to our ancestors. They treated the citizen just like the animal where our ancestor worked 12 hours long from sunrise till midnight and having three spoons of liquid porridge with a small amount of nutrition. Imagine you were one of those victim how do you feel. After learning about the history of Khmer Rouge I was taken aback, I was shocked after watching the videos. Everyone was really upset, depressed about what the history that destroys the whole country. But this exploration had taught me one important lesson which understood my own history as a Cambodian citizen. Moreover, this exploration was a serious and sensitive experience so I have to feel passionate about this. Keep pushing myself, no matter what happened during the regime I have to learn about it and accept the truth. Our product after learning about the history, we created a hole to represent the place where the Angkar buried the victim, created a questions wall, print out the picture of the victim who suffered in that time, and lastly, the painting of the worker at the rice field.
Change Agent
In the exploration, we try to find the change maker that make the change to the community and the world. For our first project, we try to find the entrepreneur change maker which mean they are making money but also to the world. When we found out who we gonna reach out to we need to do some research about that person so that we feel confident to say that person is a changemaker. After we do some research we started to write the email in a formal way. It’s really challenging for me in the first time because I never reach out to someone that I never know them before. Also, they are the entrepreneurs so we have to put a lot of work to make the email catch their attention. We reach out to many kinds of people in different countries. Some people that I reach out to is difficult like Nick Woodman, he is a founder of GoPro. So I don’t that he receive my email or not because he is a busy man and really hard to reach out to. For the second project is a similar process but except we find on the social enterprise that is a changemaker. Through this exploration, I had learned a lot and it improves my learning to the next level. I had learned so many projects from the change maker around the world and in Cambodia. Our major intention of reaching out to the change maker is to improve our network skill but also we ask the permission to record the video. We use the video to distribute to other young change maker and inspired more people to make the change in their community especially Cambodia. We had put it on our own blog but we also have our own Youtube channel that has all of the interviews.
Blog:http://changeagents.ligercambodiablog.org
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsnZFjtVgq-ex7G_xCD5l5A
Writing Couplets
Life is like a wave, we need to be brave to fight struggles. I left my home to the forest and I try my best to find a red flower. I go up on the mountain to see a red plant that has a bright spot sand. Walking across a waterfall seeing a beetle just like a red flower. I wish I could get that flower but I never reach to that power. Suddenly, I fall into the hole……
I fall in love with you but I don’t know who you are
I fall in love with you seen my first year in Liger. But I don’t know who you are. I always dream about you every night but still, I can not figure it out who you are. I always traveled around the country and see many things in my own eyes. But they are not who I want. Even I heard about you I still want to meet and stay with you. I always spent time looking and research about you but it so dark that I can not find you. The route is too small and no light at all to guide me to meet you. One day I realized that you always around me. I keep research about you and asking people about you and they tell me that you are close to me. I want to stay with you and see the full bright moon together. And finally I know who you are and you are the nature and the trees around me. My love to you is unusual, everyone said to me that I’m crazy but I still love you. You are the one who inspired me to understand who I am today.
Carbon in Cambodia
This year I involved in the exploration called Carbon in Cambodia. In this exploration, we tried to calculate our school carbon footprint and tried to find out whether Liger is neutral or not. In our class, we divided into three small teams such as International Polar Bears, International Carbon Footprints, and Green School. International Polar Bears was a team who participated in a polar bear competition where we tried to come up with the solutions to help to reduce the carbon emission. International Carbon Footprints was a team that worked on calculating the student’s emission. Green School was a team who worked on calculating the carbon emissions in Liger. So we tried to calculate the carbon that we released every year and compare it to the tree that absorbs that carbon. As a result, in order to make Liger as a neutral school, we need to plant about 6,000 more trees to balance with our carbon emissions. What I love about this exploration was that we were independent and at the end of the week the teams came together to educate each other about our progress. I was involved in the International Polar Bears project, we came up with the idea of reducing the food waste in our campus. So we set up a three weeks experiment where we calculate the food waste and turned it into a carbon emission.
Poem about Life
Be my own life
I play my life in my own destiny, I know what it is to be myself. You push me to the next level but you never know how I feel. Thank you for helping but just keep thinking the way you help me. Being expert doesn’t mean you need to be the master but being a failure is the way to success. Don’t guide me the same as you guide yourself, you and I are different so what I complain is the way you put me to you. I know who am I, you and I apply in different directions. Don’t say that I’m wrong if you just think about yourself.
I feel my eyes the same as I feel my future. The way I think it just a dream but the way I act it’s a decision in my life. What I see it’s not always the truth but when it becomes the truth is after I explored it. My opinion it just a theory but what I see is just a dream. The decision that I make it’s not the same as my expectation but I still carry on in my life. I noticed that failure never exists but what actually exist after you fail is an experience. This quote keeps me carrying on in my life.
700 meters Mekong Swim
This year is my first time that I tried to swim across the Mekong river. It’s a good challenge for me because I need to train a lot in order to participate in the Mekong swim. I never did something like this before I need work hard on swimming skill such as kicking, front cross, and press stroke. Every time that we have a swimming lesson I felt nervous especially the first start of the swimming. The swimming teacher encouraged us to swim in far distance when it just the first for us. I never thought about it before and I didn’t prepare for it yet because I never swim in a far distance. It’s really hard for me at the first time but after I trained more and more my swimming skill is getting better and better. I felt excited about the Mekong swim day. But when I’m actually prepared to swim I’m also a little bit afraid but I still happy that I can join this event. In the river, the wave is stronger than last year, so it affects a lot for swimmer and I’m one of them. I need to put more energy break through the wave. For the distance that I swam about 600 to 700 meters and I used around 19 minutes. When I arrived the other side of the river I feel tired but I felt proud of myself that I can across the river. “We never know what going to happen if we never try.”
Startup Weekend
3 days long, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On my weekend I was attempted at the startupweekend event which was a global event where different kind of people all come together to create a sort of services or products in the category of business. It was a really experiential event where I learned about the business canvas and actually tried to implement this business to Cambodia. In a team of 5 with different skills such as but not limited to programmers, designer, survey and business model. Without communication, collaboration, networking we wouldn’t come up with this amazing idea where we could help the foreigner to have a good visit in our country. So basically in our app, we created a service for the visitors so that they can have the access to the information of the hotel, food, culture, temples, and others communication service. Even though we didn’t win but we proud of our idea and the commitment that we put into this business. One of my favorite highlights was to do networking with others people like the entrepreneur and seek help from them to help with our business model.