Changing Cambodia – 2016-2017

Cambodia is a developing country, what this country want is people to be change agents and now this exists. In term of just approaching the Liger Learning Center, Liger did a really great job on connecting how each thing that they provide us affect Cambodia and also help to make changes. Everything that we give intention on always results as the effect of something. So, there are some reasons to prove that we’re changing Cambodia and we truly are.

A throwback to the exploration called “Geology of Cambodia”, this exploration gave such an inspirational things to help Cambodia. In this exploration, we are studying the history of how rocks form and geological history of Cambodia. Why it is shaped like the way they look now. The goal for this exploration is to spread information about geology to others Cambodian since there weren’t many sources about geology in Cambodia. In this exploration, we traveled to 5 provinces to see, learn about rocks and also do a lot of field research with pencil and notebook in each hand. In term of that, we are the first young bright mind Cambodians who came up with our own problems and solve it. For example, when we travel to the provinces, we saw lots of different rocks that look like ordinary rocks, but despite that we desperately curious of how that rocks are formed and decide to learn and find it out together. We were learning how Cambodia used to look like since it is the rare subject for our national curriculum. Moreover, we had created facebook group and blog for spreading the information about Geology of Cambodia to the public. While we are learning, lots of sources that we are using are from other countries. So, we eager to create our own source for Cambodia about this subject. We are changing Cambodia by commencing to learn a subject that Cambodia hasn’t thought of for a long time ago. By that, I hope that in the future, I have a chance to write a book about all the information about geology and share it to all over the country.

Previously, I am a part of the Khmer Rouge round 4 explorations, one of the final products for our exploration in term of what we have learned is hosting an event at DC-Cam in the favor of having an exhibition about all of the Khmer Rouge products from round 1 until round 4. In round 4, we are in the process of learning the downfall of Khmer Rouge and from now until the future. We have been to Killing field, S-21 and soon will be ECCC. By having what we have known, we want to inspire lots of other people to look back to their past and think. So, the good way of doing that is hosting an exhibition of Khmer Rouge products at DC-Cam since this organization is the most well-known place for Khmer Rouge documentary. We want to share our information about Khmer Rouge to High Schoolers, Workers and many other people to look how Cambodia has grown so far since the Khmer Rouge had fallen. In this exploration, we are trying really hard to come up with a solution to know which is the best way to share. Right now, we had solved it by increasing the next level of thinking and calculating problem to solve and it is also one of the change agents characteristics. In this point, we are trying to change Cambodia by the braveness and intention of young kids to do something that related to its own history. Now, we will do it. We are doing what Cambodia wants the young generation to do. I expect that everyone that join this event will be inspired.

Recently, there is an opportunity offered by Karen and MCC about being a long-term marine field researchers. As one of the students of the Liger Marine Research Team. This opportunity gives a really big impact on Cambodia on Marine Ecosystems. This opportunity is about doing work in a science field and also learning to scuba dive. The goal is to survey the fish population in different marine ecosystems such as Coral reefs, Seagrass beds, and mangroves along the Cambodian coastline of the Kep Archipelago. We will learn how to properly do marine survey including reef, invertebrates, substrates, seahorses, and seagrasses. We will focus strongly on marine organisms while having a good partnership from MCC. As we all know that illegal fishing such as trawling is really causing a big damage to Cambodia marine ecosystems. We came up with a possible solution on surveying marine organisms, including the way to protect our fish population for example by deploying artificial reefs and others project. Some of us will be taking an AP statistics class next year in order to learn how to make statistics of something or how to make a graph about something way more easier. This is a big impact on Cambodia as a new generation to study and do field research about marine ecosystems in a long term. Moreover, it is about the passionate on these students to eager not just to learn, but to implement and deploy our own projects in the real science field. This is a big adventure and challenge for us since we need to travel to our field work to do the projects every month. This opportunity allows us to involve and care more about our marine ecosystem since there are lots of things happening to our ocean. Historically, Liger had many different opportunities for students to learn about their marine biologies such as marine conservation in Cambodia, crimes in Cambodia and lots more project that involve marine ecosystem. This is what happens when Liger introduces them to their underwater marine ecosystems. We will start this project next year after our summer break. These eight students will have a strong commitment and strong intention to put all together the hard work for these long-term marine research.

To sum up, it is important for us as students to start to do something that helps to make changes for our own country. Throughout these projects, such as, Geology of Cambodia, DC-Cam event and one of the students that participate in Liger Marine Research Team, we can know how much Cambodian kids had done and about to start more of their inspirational projects. I hope that in the future, we can create something that more extremely impacts Cambodia as a young kid.        

 

Thank you!

Khmer Rouge

My round 5 exploration is focusing on Khmer Rouge. This exploration has continued for 4 rounds and this is the last round. Round 1 which focused on the rise of Khmer Rouge, round 2 focused on during Khmer Rouge, round 3 focused on the fall of Khmer Rouge and last but not least round 4 focused on the downfall and after Khmer Rouge. In this exploration, we relook at the timeline of Khmer Rouge and discuss how they fall; furthermore, what happens after they fail. In every course that we took, we get to visit places that are relevant to our topic; therefore, we took a visit to the Choeung Ek Killing Field, S-21, and ECCC. 

Our first trip is to the killing field, the killing field was a place that Khmer Rouge soldiers used to execute people. Khmer Rouge had turned the peaceful Choeung Ek village into a miserable place where they executed thousands of people and buried them in mass graves. Nowadays, this place is under conserved and serve as a museum for new generations to visit this historical tragedy place. As this place has been developed, there are audio tours available more than 10 languages that help even foreigners to understand this brutal regime. We took an audio tour around the killing field trying to get the feeling of how would people at that time feel when they were sent there. It was creepy and at the same time emotional to see people having abnormal fate and experienced this terrible genocide. 

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But, before all of these people were executed, they need to experience another torturous sanction place called S-21. S-21 was previously known as a normal high school and was turned into a prison during the period of Khmer Rouge regime. This prison was led by Kang Kek Iew was also known as Duch. He was sent to trial at Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, ECCC, he was charged with crimes against humanity, murder, and torture as his role during Khmer Rouge’s rule. He was then sent to life imprisonment. Overall, we visited the S-21 and it’s even more creepy than the killing field. They wouldn’t allow people to die easily but torture them until the end of their breath. There were only seven known survivors. This place also offers audio tours in different languages and get people to reflect on what it looks like to be tortured. 

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Our last visit is to the ECCC, Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia. The ECCC’s plan is to come to an end of the remaining people including Nuon Chea and Kheiu Samphan after doing this trial for over than a decade. On that day, we have presented the closing statements of the trial. 

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It was astonishing to be a part of this exploration since history also a part of favorites thing to learn; furthermore, to deeply understand this immense part of the history of Cambodia, The Khmer Rouge Regime.  

Geology of Cambodia

During of our fourth round of exploration in 2016-2017, I’ve been assigned in an exploration, Geology of Cambodia, which focuses on exploring rocks and geological history of Cambodia.  We went to provinces in Cambodia including, Kep, Kampot, Kampong Cham, Koh Kong, Mondulkiri, and Ratanakiri. We explored rocks that are made mysteriously around Cambodia and other parts of geology including tectonic plates. 

Our final product is to be able to understand how to explain the process that we have learned throughout the weeks to explain and spread the words to other Cambodians.  We also created a facebook page where we posted and shared all these information that we’ve learned to other Cambodians.   

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Exploration trip – Climate Change

As I said that I’m in Climate Change exploration. In this exploration we have a trip to go to Koh Seh. Koh Seh is near Vietnam border. We leave on Monday 30 January and come back on Friday 3 February. First we ride a bus to Kep, then take a boat to that islands. This islands is 1 hour further than Rabbit island. We go there to understand about marine conversation, ocean acidification.

This place is such a very nice place. We also did some snorkeling in this amazing ocean. We did snorkeling to see coral reefs in Koh Seh and also some snorkeling in Koh Angkrong. These place has an amazing coral reefs.

While we are learning at there, some of my friends are doing some project about ocean. A couple of my friends, Soliday and Venghour are deploying their project called artificial reefs and a couple more students. One name, Somphors, is deploying his project called using rattles to grow consumable algae is red sea lotus. Another one, Sreynith, is using rattles to grow seagrapes.

I can say it was an amazing trip. We met awesome people and have an unforgettable memories. Big thanks to our teacher, Karen, who organize this trip well with flexibility.

Investigation

In my Investigation, I’m working with my partner, Hongly, we are investigate about the soil. We want to find the best soil in our campus. Right now, we are doing it by taking the soil from the junior house. We test it through some equipment from lamotte. We want to test Nitrogen, Potassium, pH and phosphorus. We have some equipment such as Phosphorus extracting solution, Potassium extracting solution, Nitrogen extracting solution, pH indicator and some little things.

Our goal is to test the best quantity of soil in our campus. Than if possible in the next round, we will use that best soil to plant tree or other seeds.

Throughout the experiment. we can see that the equipment is pretty awesome. We can know a lot what is in the soil. A lot of soil have different thing. This indicate that soil is also the important thing to learn about. And we will update what going on with our experiment.

Climate Change

My exploration team along with my teacher Karen are now really focusing on the three topics. They are International Student Carbon Footprint Challenge (ISCFC), Green Schools Initiatives and International polar bear competition. I’m in the group ISCFC which coordinate by the Stanford University. We now along with other 50,000 candidates in the contest. We have to calculate each individual’s carbon footprint in the carbon calculate to know how many carbon we release per year. We working on collecting all the data of our classmates. The big question for this group is Are we carbon neutral? We are in progress, if you want to know you have to wait until this term sharation.

 

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Liger Sharation Year 5

At 2nd of December, Liger held up year 5 Sharation. It’s also my first time to do sharation. There are 4 exploration in this round. This round exploration I’m in Waste Management team. Waste Management talk about creating a business to reduce waste around our community. We are doing a feasibility study to know that we can open this business. This exploration will continue to the next and next round and end up start open the business.

Another exploration that is like the last round is Khmer rouge, Last time we learn our the time before Khmer rouge happen and now we talk about during Khmer rouge. Khmer rouge is really important to learn about and is a crucial history of Cambodia.

Next one is Preventative health exploration, This exploration is talk about how to prevent our health for maintaining our health. This group also went to Koh Rong to share their knowledge to the student in government school at there.

The last exploration is robotics, Robotics team gather and create a robot to compete in the VEX robotics competition in Taiwan. They went into many work to  be ready for the competition. They do Fund raising to make money to go to Taiwan. Through all the hard work they end up receiving a notice from judge from the competition and got “Judge Award”.

Sharation went smoothly by the collaboration of all the students.

Waste Management Exploration

My exploration team has been gone so far on our project and we are planning on going to Battambang province soon. There will be only about 2 weeks and a half left for our exploration. We are making different categories to make sure our business will going smoothly. We have been to visit the place people throw trash and learn what they had thrown, we went to interview people about our project and compost and had been to Kompot province to visit the foundation. We have a lot of thing to do, but we love to do it. We will keep doing it.

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Keep going!!

liger

 

Waste Management Exploration trip

On Saturday 5th of November, my exploration team that call waste management are going out on the trip to Kompot provinces. We going there to visit the foundation call Red Road foundation. The purpose of going to see that school is because that school are made of trash, they are doing recycled material such as organic waste, glass and plastic bottle and car tire. This foundation was found by a young women name Rachel.

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They gather all the students to come and learn how to recycle and English. This school located in Kompot at the very tough road. But, we would all happy to that we are cleaning the environment and help those poor kids. Here is the picture of the school

 

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This is just a small school, but full of smile from the students.

This school is cool. It doesn’t depend on the school big or small it’s depend that this school the poor kids.

We go and share our experience with them and we talk to each other. We have a good time.

Thanks, to Red Road foundation

 

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My first interview at Liger

Hey guys!!! According to my exploration with Keith waste management!! I have some work was to interview the people about trash what they throw everyday. We have interview many people and they answer it. We ask something like:

What is the trash that you use and throw the most? All of them all answer that they throw away plastic bags the most.
And one more question that seem good for all the people is that “If we put sorted trash bin and want all the people to put the trash in the correct type of trash”. And they said they would really thank to us of the plan to do that. I can see that people take the trash to burn and bury and also throw it away on the pile of trash nearby the pagoda. I can see that trash problem really effect people living. They even wish for the cintri or other company to come and take the trash. They don’t really want to do that either, but they have no choices.

We all want our country to be clean. We gathering together to help change our country.

Thank you!!!!