In the Community: CYWA Volunteers on Mission During Follow Up Outreach to CWC Network Partners, Citizen and Local University Students at UME in Kg Cham

On 13th March 2013, CYWA volunteers, Kong Rachana and Morn Nata travelled to Kampong Cham Province  during the follow-up outreach activities with UME student from the University of Management and Economics (UME) from in and around Kompong Cham . In all, there were 50 participants 27 of which were females students. 

Kong Rachana, CYWA Volunteer 

After having briefly introduced themselves to the participants, Rachana and Nacha, they began their presentation with a overview of CYWA history and activities, including CYWA volunteer's participation in several capacity building workshops as well as have taken part in the preparation and facilitating of national and regional workshops on ASEAN. We are a recently establish network of activists volunteered originating from the UNWomen sponsored project to which SILAKA has been implementing. This project entitled, Strengthening Cambodia Contribution to Promote and Protect Women’s Human Rights in ASEAN  (SCWHR in ASEAN) which aims at engaging Cambodia women groups, ASEAN bodies, and encouraging Cambodian representatives to AICHR and ACWC effectively collaborate in order to ensure the protection of women’s human rights, facilitating the establishing of a National Network of Women Organizations and strengthening the capacity in order to collectively harness the momentum of the Upcoming ASEAN integration.

Participants had many ideas and hopes for the 
upcoming ASEAN Intergration

During their presentation, they also presented CYWA's mission and vision for the future and shared insight into what our future project goals were and how we would like to achieve those goals. The goals of establishing the network is not only to share determinate information, but to share experiences, and opportunities for training locally and regionally. In creating a common platform to collectively make available activities, resources and opportunities will strengthen the CYWA Network and help expand our leadership and network. 

Notably, CYWA volunteer team has played a crucial role in implementing of the SILAKA led Project, Strengthening Cambodia Contribution to Promote and Protect Women’s Human Rights in ASEAN (SCWHR in ASEAN) which is a partnership in collaboration with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality (UNWOMEN). 

In line with the sharing, the question was posed to the participants of what their expectations were from the Cambodian government and of ASEAN. During the open discussion, the majority of participants expressed their desire for the government to improve the standard of education across the board, in particular providing continued education and vocational training to uneducated portion of population to help them improve their ability to increase their livelihoods and improve the standard of living for the impoverished under represented citizens in the remote area in and around Cambodia. There were expressions of interest in having more access to modern technology center especially for student.

Many wish for more opportunities and better access to language education in order to be able to compete in today's demanding job market. Given the opportunity to learn and participate efficiently would require for Cambodian students to improve their English.Some students were eager to benefit from an enlarged job market that the ASEAN integration will bring to the region, however they were also equal concerned about not being fully equipped to contend for those jobs. 

As it is essential for socialization, there should be platforms created to allow youth must develop themselves by way of social activities. Students expressed the need for opportunities and platforms for the youth to collectively gather to share and express themselves openly. Overwhelming concern for the youth representative, was the iminent concern regarding the upcoming  ASEAN integration 2015. They fear they are not equipped or nearly as prepared to compete with the influx of  ASEAN citizen into Cambodia, because the reality is they don't feel that their qualification are not standard enough. 

Shortly following the presentation and open discussion about expectations, participants were introduced to CYWA involvement their various social network applications including visiting the CYWA Facebook page and the  CYWA Group activities, CYWA Blogs and the CYWA Google Groups and showed them how to access information about CYWA Network. There was great interest in our network activities  All participants were invited to as CYWA network partners and supporters. It was a very fruitful event and our efforts to expand our network base was achieved with many of the participants registering to be in our network.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all the eager participants for their kind attention and hand on participation in the outreach activities. Without their contributions, the outcome would not have been achieved and goals not net. As thanks to participants, we closed the event with a friendly question and answer session with rewards going to 3 of the students which were able to answer the correctly.