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.
