Young Generation For Development "YGD"

Mr. Soksan HING spoke to students and their parents

Young Generation for Development (YGD) is a newly-established group whose members were former contestants of the reality show, Youth Leadership Challenge, co-organized by Youth Council of Cambodia (YCC) and TV5. Read and Listen VOA interview by Mr. Soksan HING and Ms. Socheata HENG.

YGD was created on May 16, 2007 and there are 16 members. With an intent to help improve the Cambodian society and to work with young people to drive them to actively participate in social activities as well as to avoid using drugs, to study hard, to be best youth and to enjoy life with safety and healthiness, especially we would like to make the children liking and loving the reading and learning to avoid illiteracy. Please view the YGD's in Brief--Khmer and English.

Therefore, we have decided to work cooperatively together in order to achieve our group’s goal. One of the Cambodia Millenium Development Goals (CMDGs) is to ensure all chidren complete primary schooling by 2010 and nine-year basic schooling by 2015. Although the country has made progress in increasing access to basic education in recent years, there is a long way to go to reach the targets set under the CMDGs.

In order to ensure the increase in admission rate and decrease in the drop out of school, a number of factors need to be considered such as free admission, motivation for teachers to teach and sufficient facilities/equipment. Although the free admission has been practiced, there is still a lack of motivation for teachers due to low salary.

Moreover, with limited facilities, especially for students, there is still difficulty for them to study. With the intention of training children to like reading and to get access to studying materials, our team has decided to launch a project of bringing books for libraries of some schools in various provinces along with half-day forums to broadcast the bad impact of illiteracy.

In the occasion of bringing books to open the libraries at some primary schools, YGD will conduct the half-day forum. We will invite students’ parents to participate in, so that they can become the part of students’ learning, i.e. to know the benefits of reading and to push their children to read books more often either at home or at school especially, to make the students liking and loving the reading and learning to avoid illiteracy.

In the meantime, the YGD members conducted a role-play (short drama) about the advantages of reading because the reading would help children to improve their critical thinking, cleverness, broad knowledge and dignity especially they will be regarded as role-modal children in their community as well as society. After finishing the role-play we also called on all parents or guardians of students to send their children to school as a phrase said that “sending children to school means saving property for children.

YGD Source of Fund: After establishing the working group (YGD) already on June 2007, we primarily started our project by raising fund and asking books and other materials and stationeries from NGOs, bookshops, businesspeople, seller, elder students and other charitable people. Recently we just get fund from International Republican Institute in Cambodia and other charitable people especially from Mr. Gregory F. Lawless, first secretary of U.S embassy to Cambodia. View YGD's project proposal.

Until now we conducted ten forums and opened nine libraries at various rural-primary-schools in the following provinces:

1. 5 libraries for Kompong Cham province
2. 2 libraries for Pursat province
3. 2 libraries for Prey Veng province
4. 1 library for Takeo province

Please view the minutes to learn more YGD activities: Khmer [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], English and click here to see pictures.

THE ROAD GO TOWARD FUTURE

After becoming the champion of the Youth Leadership Challenge (YLC), Soksan HING was invited by TV5 to be a guest speaker in a new program, Road Go Toward Future, produced to interview some people who succeeded what she or he has done in their daily lives.

Soksan was asked many questions related to personal life since he was a child till becoming first place winner of the YLC. "I'm orphan, my father died in 1982 and mother died in 2000", Soksan said. "I always fight and struggle with all challenges in order to make my life even meaningful, especially to finish my study."

"It's incredible that I could be the Champion because the Show was a new one and very challengs with high capable contestants. Especially, the only one candidate who would be selected to be champion to visit the USA in order to participate in the Leadership Development Training", Soksan said. Please click the below clips:

CHAMPION OF YOUTH LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

Youth Leadership Challenge (YLC) was an educational program to promote leadership among young people, and the TV show was produced to encourage youth audience to become more responsible, act responsibly, generate initiatives, and involve in and improve their community service through working with local authority. More detail please read in Khmer and English [1] [2] [3].

YLC was co-organized by Youth Council of Cambodia and TV5 and supported fund by United States Agency for International Development via International Republican Institute. On March 03, 2007 was the date of episode of YLC competition, HING Soksan was only one candidate who won the prize at the end of the YLC and was interviewed by local and international medias, one of them The Slate, famous magazine of USA, published as well. The prize for YLC champion (first-place winner) was an oversea study visit for two weeks to the United States in order to get leadership development training and short internship.