Changing Cambodia- 2017-2018

      As you know, Cambodia isn’t a developed country. So, It needs a lot of changes. Changing Cambodia is huge, strenuous, but if you have passion about it, it won’t be that hard. For me, even though, the changes are small or big, it still calls a change and it is what I have thought about since I was young. I want my country looks beautiful and peaceful, no thief, no traffic accident, no violent, no drugs and more.  I believe that I can’t make big changes in Cambodia unless I had made small changes first and I can’t change Cambodia without having “ Education”. Education is very important to me and to everyone. With education comes opportunities. So, if you have a high education you have more abilities to change Cambodia. So let’s learn together to have the education to change your country! Below are what I have done in making changes in Cambodia.

  • First Exploration: Amazing Bamboo:

In this exploration, I learned about bamboo as a sustainable alternative material for building, for food, for medicine…. and I also made many products using bamboo as the main material. It is very fascinating. There are many things that I didn’t know about bamboo, but after this exploration, I learned a lot and now I know that bamboo can be used to make many things, it is a good alternative. One thing that I’m very interested about bamboo is that it is the fastest growing plant in the world and it can grow 90 cm per day. It just the type of grass. And it grows anywhere accept North pole. Also, it can live for a long time that  I couldn’t believe (60 years-120 years). Wow, that is really cool! I shared my knowledge with other people too, I told people what is special about bamboo and The things that can be made using bamboo, now they learned more, now they know more information about bamboo and they know a lot of things that can be made using bamboo, so they can make a job that making things using bamboo, which also develops our economy .

  • Second Exploration: Entrepreneurship:

Making a business is not as easy as I had thought before after learning in Entrepreneurship exploration. everyone has to worry about many things, especially,  about falling. But that’s okay, You won’t succeed, unless you had felt. And if you felt, you have to start thinking of new ideas, try to avoid wasting time. As you can see that many successful entrepreneurs never succeed unless they had felt many times, but when they felt, what did they do? They try to think of new ideas! They don’t waste the time! Because they always think that Time is Money, time is very important, it can’t be replaced. In this exploration, I learned about making a business and I learned many skills that help my business work well. There are 15 students in the exploration and facilitator Keith put us into a group of 3 people and brainstorm the ideas of what business do we want to make that can help to solve the problems in Cambodia. My group focus on the education theme which we want to create something that can help the people to gain more knowledge by using our product. because we want to make a product that can help people to gain more knowledge and also to have fun, so, we decided to make a board game about general knowledge. They can play our board game when they feel bored and while playing it they gain more knowledge too. After we made it, we went to other schools to get feedback and take those feedback to improve our product. Then, we have to set a price for our product because we gonna sell it, but before that, we have to calculate the cost, how much does it cost us to make one of this board game and how much time did we spend to make one board game. So, there are many processes in making a business. Then, we went outside to other schools to sell our products and in total, we sold 5 of our products.  So, after this exploration, I’ve learned and understood more about the entrepreneur and I also made change by creating this board game. At last, I want to say that if one person making one business that helps to solve a problem in our society, and there are millions of people in our country so there will be a lot of changing in Cambodia and our country will become a developed country in one day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Geography Book:  

Making the geography book of Cambodia is a huge and arduous project. We need many skills and some core values such as determination, Stewardship, Optimism ingenuity..etc. in order to make this marvelous book. When I was young, I thought that making a book is easy, We only have to write paragraphs and copy the information and combine it into a book. However, after I have learned in this exploration, my thought had changed, I don’t think it is easy anymore because we have to do a lot of things and take a long time to do it. As the author, the most important part is that we have to make sure that the information makes sense to the reader, is it understandable and Does it has the sources and is the sources are reliable?  We have to provide all those information in the book. This year, I have an exploration that called Geography book design team and I also have it since the first year too. There are 8 members of our team. For the first year, I’ve learned about the software that creates the book first, which is Adobe Indesign. There are two seniors that teach us how to use the software because they have used it to make the book, so they know a lot. We’ve learned many skills in Adobe InDesign. When I first saw it, I thought that it’s so messy and it’s hard but after I have learned how to use it, I found that it isn’t as hard as I’ve thought before. For this year, we divided into three geography exploration, which are the content team, the editing team, and the design team. We started designing the book in the software after we got the information done by the two team. The book will have all of the information about 25 provinces in Cambodia. The goal of creating this book is to share with the government students and to other people who interested in learning about Cambodia and the book will be published soon. I put a lot of determination and I’m happy to make this book to share with other people. Finally, I did create change in Cambodia because I am part of creating this book to share will all the students and people to know and learn more about Cambodia, about their own country. Also, I hope this book will help people in their learning and their work.

  • World Story Exchange:

In my first year at Liger, I have a project which is creating a short video to share my story and to inspire people around the world. This short project was lead by two of the visitors that came from another country which are Lindsay and Scott. They come from the United State and they travel to many schools around the world to do this project. I learned many things such as how to make a video, photography skill and writing skill.  In my video, I introduced myself and some activities that I usually do such as handball which is one of my favorite sport, reading, and advertise our traditional dance. Also, I included three messages to inspire people when they watch my video and those messages are Play sports every day make you healthy and strong, In your free time, you can continue to keep learning, and the last one is to keep trying until you are successful. Even Though I didn’t actually go to inspire and encourage or share my life to them in a real conversation but I did it by creating a video, which I think it is really cool and it is not boring too. Finally, I think that this video and all of these inspirational messages will be helpful to people and will be useful in their life.

https://ligerstories.blogspot.com/p/stay-active-by-molinaka.html

  • Technovation Challenge  is a 3 months technology entrepreneurship program and competition for young women from all over the world. It is open for girls only that has age between 10 to 18 years old.  It happening once a year. This competition is we have to create a team of two to five people and each team have to create an app that helps to solve the problem in our society that we face. So, in a team, there are some peoples working on coding and some working on the business. I have joined this competition for two years. So, I have more experience.  For the first year, our team creates an app call Pre-health which demonstrates people about lifestyles such as nutrition, activities, and sleep. Pre stand for preventive. After learning and creating an app we have to submit our work to the global judges. Also, we have a pitch in Cambodia which is a national pitch event. It’s a competition just to celebrate Technovation in Cambodia and this we have to present our idea in front of 300-400 people and the judges. The team that will win is a team that has good ideation and good presentation skill and our team won. We are satisfied and so proud of ourselves. We were as happy as we get a million dollar. However, my team didn’t pass to the global. Luckily, one of our school’s team passed to global to San Francisco, United State and they have to compete with other teams from other countries. For the second year, we created an app called Toporist. It is an app that both national and international tourists to find places to visit in Cambodia, especially to know more about the hidden places in Cambodia. Also, we help to promote ancient and old architectures, including attractive places, because we want to develop our country. Unfortunately, my team didn’t any for this year and we were a bit upset, but we’re glad that we also gain more knowledge and experiences from this year. Finally, I think these apps are enough to help people to know more about the lifestyle, what they should do? And What they should eat? And also help tourists to know more about the hidden places in Cambodia and help preserve the ancient and old architectures. It’s also developing Cambodia economy by increasing the number of tourists come to Cambodia.

 

  • Conclusion:

       In conclusion, throughout the past two years, I have made changes in Cambodia, even though those are small changes, but I very appreciate it and I’m so proud of myself.  At first, I want to change Cambodia but I have no idea of how I can change Cambodia but after I have learned all of these explorations and participated in all of these opportunities, those social events, it helps me to learn more and get more ideas of how I can change my country. Overall, all of the changes that I have made are all related to education, so I realized that I can’t change Cambodia without education and I will try all my best to participate in more different events to acquire new experiences for changing Cambodia.

 

 

 

 

 

Memoir- The worst thing in my life

Have you ever lost your most loved people? How would you feel when they are gone? I’m sure that most people have experienced this situation and those that are gone may be due to diseases and others. However, there aren’t many people that feel the same as me because my most loved people weren’t gone because of diseases. They were gone without letting me know, they were just gone in a fleeting moment.

The sound of the bell rang, teung teung teung, it was time to go home. I learned in the government school called Anuwat Primary School and I was 10 years old. There were many students running out of the classes to find their parents, brothers and sisters, whoever was waiting for them to take them home. I also ran with a smile on my face toward the tuk tuk that was waiting for me and some of my friends to take us home. I was so hungry and I was thinking in my mind that  “Which food did my mom cook for lunch today?“ Also, I wanted to watch the movie. However, when I came to the tuk tuk, my face turned from smiling to disappointed. Do you know what happened?

 

The driver told me that “ Your great aunt and great uncle passed away this morning because the thieves were getting into their house and killed them.”

I asked “ Really? Is that real, How did you know?”

He answered confidently“ yeah, because I drove across their house this morning and I saw.”  

 

I felt so shocked after hearing about this and I couldn’t believe that. I wanted to go home as fast as possible because I wanted to know more information about that. I was thinking “ How could that happen? Because I just saw them last week at the pagoda during the Pchum Ben day. When I arrived home, the door was closed, I realized that it was real, because no one was at home because my mom and dad went to my great aunt and uncle’s house. Only me, my brother and my grandma were at home. I quickly got off the tuk tuk and ran into my house. My grandma was very concerned and she told me the things that had happened, but she didn’t tell me much. She said “ your mom and dad went to looked my great aunt and great uncle at their house because they got killed by thieves”. I felt so sad every time I heard about this.Then I asked “ Why didn’t you go there too?” She answered “ If I go there, who will stay at home to cook food for you and your brother?” She continued speaking “ I will go in the afternoon, when you and your brother went to school.” After that, I opened the facebook and saw a very very surprised thing. I saw a red colour all over my great aunt. Her body, her dress full of blood. My great uncle was sleeping next to my great aunt. Their family was crying a lot. I was thinking in my mind “ Wow, that was so brutal, how could the thieves do such a thing? Because of their selfishness?” Are their hearts made out of metal? I was very angry at them. However, they will get what they deserve for doing such a terrible thing like this. When my mom came home, I asked her, ”how is it going on right now?” She answered disappointedly, “That’s okay, Don’t worry about this, just prepare to go to study”. I didn’t say anything because i knew that she was disappointed, but I wanted to know so much. When I went to school, my friends ran as fast as a cheetah toward me and asked “ Are you okay? Because we heard that your great aunt and your great uncle passed away.” Then I answered “ I’m okay, thanks”. In fact, I wasn’t okay, but I didn’t want them to worry about me.

 

On that day, I didn’t go to the funeral because my mom didn’t allow me to go there. She said “ You were too young, you shouldn’t go to the funeral.”. On the other hand, I went to the ceremony of 49 days after death and it was on the new year day. That time, I was young, I didn’t know anything, I didn’t understand what did they do at the ceremony. I was so confused about what was happening and I just did whatever the old people told me to do.

I saw many people and some of them were still crying. The smoke of incense spread everywhere. Some kind of the incenses smell as sweet as perfume, but for me,  if I smell too much incense, it hurts my eyes. Finally, I saw their photos were put in a frame. I stood in front of the frame as straight as a tree and suddenly the tears were falling from my eyes because I missed the old memories that I had with them. I missed the time that I was eating ice cream on the beach with them, swimming and more. They bought me a lot of things and loved me as their granddaughter. These memories made me miss them so much.

 

This was the first experience of death in my life. Now, I realized that the most terrified thing is not a ghost. In contrast, it is “Evil people” and I’m wondering that how could they did like this, Don’t they care about how their parents feel, who were feeding them since they were young, because none of the parents want to see their kids do the wrong things in their life. From this experience, I learned that people are not good all and I shouldn’t trust people without knowing a lots about them. Also, I have to be careful that I don’t forget to lock the doors at night.