Accomplishment comes from our determination. Talking about determination, my team has completely achieved something already. You might have already got a clue what I am talking about. I have been working on Outdoor program for 3 rounds. When my round 4 begins, I have Outdoor program again on my Wednesday schedule! How pathetic I am?
We have contacted the Green Village school in Kampong Cham and decided to work with them. Before we go on a trip, we have a workshop for them to warm up before going on trip.
After having a full days of workshop, we went to Kirirom Mountain in Kampong Speu.
This is one of my experience with teaching and guiding other to the wild. I wish I could do more than one trip to get more experience.
Create change doesn’t mean you only do it one time. To create change, you need long time duration to create that change and make an impact. Follow up from last round, I’m still here creating and implement program to different schools in Cambodia.
Let’s do it!
Last round, me and my team create workshop plan and module for Outdoor Leadership program. This round, we are going out to different schools in Cambodia, especially Phnom Penh to try out our program and run through our module. In week three of our exploration, we went to KAPE organization which is located at Phnom Penh. This organization has been approved by our team that we can work with them. On that day, we went to get to know each other by playing some games, having conversations and building trust. We also observe some of the students that can fit to our workshop and have high interest on Outdoor.
“The more you do, the best you will get”
There is a quote states, “ The more you do, the best you will get”. This quote has push and inspire us to do more than what we are doing right now. Last time, we implement and practice our workshop plan with KAPE organization. Because we want to improve our work, we also went down to Happy Chandaraschool to do our workshop there. We have been improving our Khmerworkshop more and more than before. We also got a lot of feedback which includes what we did well and what could have been done better.
Young Leaders
“To teach others, you need to teach yourself first”. Seeing this quote, it make us going hiking at Oral mountain in Kampong Speu, Cambodia. We have a plan to take the students that have done our workshop before and going hiking at different mountains in Cambodia. To lead them to different mountains in Cambodia, we need to learn and know what to do first before teaching others, so we are going to go hiking in Oral mountain! Our goal is to learn how to be an outdoor leader and to face different situations that might happen during the trip. We need to learn how to face those problems and solve it.
Take Action | During Trip
We went to Oral mountain for two nights and three days. On the first day, we took four hours to ride the bus from our school to Kampong Speu province. We took another 2 hours on riding tractor to the base of the mountain and we took 3 hours to hike up to ⅓ of the mountain. We need to carry all of the stuff that we need including, water, food, tents, our personal backpack, grassmates, food containers and other small items such as hygiene stuff.
On the second day, we wake up early in the morning and we start hiking at 7am. You will never expect or imagine what the route look like if you never been hiking before. The route is really difficult to hike and very steep. We had to hang on to each other in order to reach to different places on the mountain. We have one CHALLENGE that we all need to face. Before the trip, our facilitators have divided us into four different teams and lead in different days. The facilitators role is to act as one of the participants and have different problems for each day which includes homesick, tired and other problems that are related to hiking. We are the leader of that day, we need to help them and find a solution to help them.
On the last day, we get back to the base of the mountain and rode the tractor back to the village and to our bus. We get back to our school by 5:30 pm and it’s time to clean up!
We help preventing blisters for each otherThe number 3 count from the back is me!View from 1/3 of the mountainThe man is sitting is our amazing tour guide
Adventurous, new experiences and Face Difficulty
There are so many challenges and difficulties during the trip. At the same time, we also have fun and enjoy the time that we have together. We have to do most of the things by yourself like carry the items up to the mountain. The route to the campsite that we are going to sleep is really steep and slippery. Some of our members health is not really good and some of us is not that strong too. Talking about strong, we hike up the mountain on the second day and the route is extremely difficult. I can say that, this is my first time having a difficult hike. I love hiking, so I kept pushing myself and my legs to continues even though it sore my leg’s muscles. Sadly, we didn’t reach the top of the mountain because we are afraid of getting dark.
“The fruits of your own hard work is the sweetest” – Deepika Padukone
Kakrona, a girl with determination, love to explore, love adventure, self protection and love mountain is having an accomplishment that not most of her friends didn’t have the chance. She was born to be a person who loves nature from her heart, her blood and her soul. By hearing the name, people already know that she is strong and unbreakable. Who is that girl? It’s me! I will keep pushing myself to do work. I will make this program happen and well known around Cambodia. I will try my best no matter what. I will make the best of this, so it can pay my hard work for 129 hours or 98 days.
Outdoor leadership is the leader in wilderness. Outdoor can lead a way to define your new life with nature. Talking about nature, if you are looking deep into Nature, and then you will understand everything. Nature provides everything to both humans and animals. Nature makes your worries melt away. Nature instantly relax you and make you feel unbelievably, grateful for this beautiful planet we get to call home. It’s not too late to appreciate nature.
I have already experienced outdoor trip with my friends and my teachers. Now, I want to let other youth in Cambodia to experience and feel what is like to be outdoors. By doing that, I’ve joined a project called, Outdoor Leadership Program. Our goal is to help Cambodia youth experience trekking and surviving in the wilderness. We also want to create a passion of trekking for Cambodian youth rather than riding polluted vehicles at the trekking area. We do want to giving opportunities and successfully motivate students and youths to go out into the wilderness, camp, and trekking to fully understand about nature and the environment. That includes doing workshop, social media interaction and going on trips. The reason we want to do this because most of Cambodian youth don’t really going out and spend time with nature.
There are four big categories that we want to give out to them. There are Leadership Skills, Medical skills, Nature appreciation / Environmental stewardship and Wilderness skills. Those categories are being organized and written by our students based on their experience and knowledge from their learning. We are students. We never went out and teach other people. During the project, we have learned how to keep people engaged with our topic, having confidence at speaking toward people, open and close the conversation, what makes a good workshop and some communication skills. Learning from our teachers is not enough. We also doing some Skype with other outdoor leader from different countries and interview them.
Personally, I want to share these ideas to a lot of people. I believe that, people around the world want to understand and protect nature. In the area where I lived, I have shared this idea to my sisters and other of my neighbor. Being outdoors is fun and you can take care of nature while you have fun.
Have you ever watch the movies or film? Was it good? Do you like it? What is your favorite movie? What kind of genre do you like? What is your favorite movie country? Okay, Let’s stop asking question now. This is the last round and the last exploration for my third year. I was one of the lucky students who get to choose to learn with two Hollywood star. They are Aviv and Lianne. Through seven weeks, we have divide into two team. There are acting class and editing class. We have learn different skill for five weeks and for the last two weeks we have made an amazing film together.
Let’s talk about me 🙂 For this amazing film, we have different roles and I am Production Designer! I am the head of the production designer. My role is to dress up the actor and have all the props ready for them. This role is kind of hard because I need to ask for all the props and clothes for the actor. I enjoy my role and I think, I’ll pay my best effort on doing my role.
What I have learn from this exploration is so much to talk. It’s including the technique of shooting the video, how the different role do their job, types of film, story or explanation behind the story, the evolution of the story and the technique of editing the video. I can say that, after I learn about all those things, every time I watch the movies, I always look at the angle that they shoot, the tone, the design and other things. During the seven weeks that we have learn, our teacher do screening a lot of movies. My favorite movie among all of them is The Matrix.
Outdoor leadership was a really amazing exploration among all of the exploration. It was an exploration that we going out to camp in the forest and I have a lot of fun.
On 26th of March, we went to Mondulkiri. We leave school at 8am and we have a long ride from our school to Mondulkiri. We arrived Mondulkiri at the evening.
Wow! That was me when I step out from the bus. You don’t know that feeling, if you are not in the situation. It’s really beautiful out here.
The weather here was just perfect! But let see what is the weather for the morning
___ Wednesday 27th
Wow! The weather was just killing me! It’s very cold out here!!
I can say that it freeze my whole body, from my head to my toes.
Trekking for hard and long way make my legs sore. I was so excited with all this nature, but this is was my favorite part. Our tour guide help us to the place where the elephant live and they help us cooked our lunch. You never know what will happen, but I helped them cooked! Yeah, I can say that this is one of my big accomplished for the trip because I’ve help them a lot with cooking.
After the food done, we ate all together at a big and long table. We all have fun together during lunch time. The food was amazing! Everything they use is all from nature, No Technology. I was amaze with their work because they were so creative. They are one of the indigenous people that are really friendly. I never think that indigenous people act this kind and I’m really appreciated them on their work.
After we finish everything, we trek back with safe and sound!
New environment always difficult for me. During this trip, I’ve a struggle time with my sleeping. It was hard to sleep in tent because it’s a small place. In wilderness is full of animals. I can say that it’s a place for animal to lives. One of my struggle is when many insects enter my tent without permission! Well, if they ask for the permission I would not let them in and they will just sneak in the same :(. During the night time, we turn on our light to keep it bright and that when the insects enter. We try to kept our tent close, but they can still sneak in without me knowing the reason.
Overall, this trip giving me a lot of experiences and lesson. What lesson that they trip giving me is when I need to take care of my tent, when I cooked food in the wild without technology, when to take care of myself during hot day and long trek and last but not least is when we enjoy together.
All of this can apply to my life. We never know what will happen on us in the future. What if we stuck in the forest and what will we do to save our life?
Robot means the machine that we made up and program to make it run. When we talk about coding, I really don’t like it. You know the feeling when you don’t know how to do cod and you end up with joining Robotic exploration.
In the past seven weeks, we have been learn about what is robot and how we build it. We were trying hard to build our robot and learn how to code. Oh no! Code! We divide the students into two groups and each group have five members. In each group, they divide them self into two groups. One is work on project and one is work on the robot.
Oops, I forgot to tell you this. In each year, the First Lego League have a robot competition ( If you want to know more, click on the link and read more 🙂 ) This year was about “Into Orbit”. Space is one of the most interesting subject to learn. In this competition goal are we complete the mission and find one problem in space. The problem doesn’t need to be related to the mission. The mission is the mission for our robot to complete. For example, the first mission is they want you to push the satellite to the sky and you need to program your robot and push it up. On mid-March, which means March 12, we will be leaving to Singapore for robot competition.
The goal of our exploration is not to win the competition, but to show our hard working and our teamwork. The core value of our team is to respect, communicate, solution before complain and help each other. We want to enjoy together and not get angry because of something.
People that live far from the town or city, Cambodian called Indigenous group. There are many Indigenous groups in Cambodia. One of the Indigenous group is popular and known well in Cambodia. That’s Pnong. Everything that they have like, culture, food, tradition, clothes, art, and everything, most Cambodian know very well. Beside Pnong, there are many groups.
In my project, I have learned five different indigenous people. They are Suoy, Kachock, Tompoun, Jaria, and Krueng.
Suoy indigenous group is located in Kampong Speu. They live in Kuordontey village, Chhaen community, Oral district, Kampong Speu province. They are a small community and quiet. They have government help them. In the past four weeks, I went to Kampong Speu to visit them and get the information from them. This is the second time that I step into Suoy community. They are friendly and greeting well. I spend the rest of the morning with my friends to interview them about some of their culture and other things. We collect the information from them and create the books for the next generation. In the future, Suoy indigenous group will be more popular and will be a famous worldwide group.
We went to Ratanakiri to visit Kachock. The chef of the village said, “ We are the first visitor “. We really surprised what he said. This indigenous group is live far from the town and rare people got to know them. They also have some unique culture and belief. They are very shy because they never meet stranger before. When we start to talk to them and ask some nice question, they started to trust us and want to tell us about their story. If you are interesting, you can visit Kachock because they have a really interesting belief. Did you know that? When you go to Kachok community, don’t take the picture of the kids unless you have permission from the villager.
Tompoun is my favorite indigenous group that I ever met. They are so nice and they are very brave. They greet us and talk to us very well. Even they don’t really know Khmer or speak Khmer, they still try and answer what we want to know from them. They have so many things that they made by themselves. They have their scarf, gourd water bottle, wine, and their traditional clothes. I bought one of their scarfs and it cost $3. It’s really good quality. They have a different kind of scarf. Tompoun community is big and there is an organization to help them also. Their story from the past is so interesting and unique.
Jaria is an indigenous people that known very well in Cambodia. Jaria people don’t know Khmer well, but they can communicate with us. They try their best to let us know about their culture and other things. Jaria people also shy. They didn’t want to answer what we ask them, but they still complete our mission. In my through, future come Jarai will be known as one of the most famous indigenous group in Cambodia.
Krueng is the last indigenous community group that we visit. They really prepare for us before we come. They are all ready for us to ask the question. They all can speak Khmer. They show us their song, food, clothes..etc. They are very friendly. One of my highlight of this indigenous group is I try to catch the wild pig and puppies, but I just can’t. Finally, I catch one puppy. Oww!! It’s so good. I like puppy. In the future, Krueng will also be known by many people like Pnong.
Exploration is a seven weeks project that created by Liger. Our teacher have divided the students in to team and put them in different exploration. I am in “ Say No To Plastic “ exploration. In this exploration we are trying to stop the Single-Use-Plastic. The Single-Use-Plastic is the plastic that people use only one time and throw away such as Styrofoam, Plastic Bags, Straws, Coffee Stirrers, Plastic Cups, Plastic Spoon/Fork, Water Bottle and Food Packaging. We been research about the Con and Pros about the Single-Use-Plastic. The problem of using Plastic are it take long time to degrade, Toxic chemical is in plastic, can lead to cancer, birth defect and more, it spoils our groundwater, effect to our environment like air pollution, threaten marine life like they mistake for the food or give it to their baby and poison our food chain. Some of you might not get what poison our food chain is, so let me give an example of Poison Our Food Chain.Because of the animals eating the plastic they are going to die. For example the fish has been eaten a piece of plastic. One or two day later they are die or people fish them. In the restaurant or at home people will cook fish and also because of the plastic have chemical so it will spread to every system inside the fish body and when people eat the fish they will get sick. The advantages of using plastic are it’s cheap and it’s very easy to carry around, it’s lighter than the paper bag, it’s waterproof than the paper bag and it’s stronger. The disadvantages of using plastic are it’s dangerous to wildlife and marine life, it’s pollute the environment and it’s take longer to degrade. In first week we did some research about plastic. Second week we trying to find the some staff to replace plastic. Third week we start to discuss with our team what we have learn so far in two weeks. Fourth week we get some item for replace the plastic. Fifth week we start to giving out the items that we have find to replace plastic to our school. Sixth week we start to collect the data and survey the people that use our new items. In last weeks, which is week seven we prepare for our exploration. Right now we have banned some plastic straws in our school. Our big goal is to stop having plastic straws, styrofoam, plastic bag and plastic cups coming in to our school. We have metal straws instead of plastic straws, Styrofoam that made from corn starch or lunch box instead of styrofoam made from plastic, folding bag instead of plastic bag and use the reusable cup instead of plastic cups. This is some quotes from our students and our staff in our school. There will be some khmer quotes.
We buying the doughnuts at the store and we request the vendor to put our doughnuts in paper box instead of plastic bagWe went to Aeon Mall first to buy the folding bags for our students to use instead of plastic bag
