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The last two year at Liger Leadership Academy before graduated, we all need to finish a research paper. In Cambodia, dropout is a widespread and common problem. The dropout rates are especially high in rural areas due to intensified economic pressures on the family and a lack of formal higher educational opportunities. The number of children involved in work is really high. By going to work, kids are denied from school because of their family finance or education. So, the kids can help them with their business at a young age (ILO Unicef). It stretched out to both rural and urban schools regardless of if the students are girls or boys (KOICA). As with the dropout rates, rural communities are not as successful in retaining students as urban communities. School dropout can be due to social and academic problems in school. Lastly, students are lacked of support and resources from their families, schools, and communities.

Researcher in Cambodia mentioned before students drop out these were the symptoms irregular attendances and completed fewer assigned homework. The students’ parents divorced or passed a ways they are most like to quit school very fast. Parent level of education also might effects their children attended school according to their wealth and the education’s level. Also, Cambodian students helped their parent to do house chores and work. In Cambodia, there have been few studies conducted on school dropout rates and rationale. Additionally, these studies only focused on select provinces in Cambodia. The studies were from 2010 to 2016, and the statistics show that the percentage of student dropouts remain the same, that means the problems researcher’s found haven’t fully solved yet. Since the information was years ago, it won’t be valid anymore to represent the new generation. Currently, the dropping out is still a problem that needs to solve. My research will be the next research paper that focuses on two areas in Siem Pang and Phnom Penh of why students drop out in 2019 (identify the differences). The information will help to reduce the amount of dropout in Cambodia currently. The Phnom Penh Post stated, “The Kampuchean Action for Primary Education’s (Kape) school dropout pilot program currently operates in six provinces – Battambang, Banteay Meanchey, Pursat, Kampong Speu, Prey Veng and Svay Rieng”. My research is different from other researches because there has been no study conducted in Stung Treng regarding student dropout yet. Moreover, this research will reduce the rate of the dropout in Stung Treng because more people will notice Stung Treng and realize that it needs help to solve this issue. Even though, my research focuses only on a small area, I will try my best to make the data as precise and accurate as possible. The information will be from students who dropped out and their parents. The information will help school availability reduces children’s work involved and increases enrolment; school quality helps working children to remain in school. Most importantly, to compare the changes of reasons why students drop out from eight years and two years ago to now. It’s a sign for everyone to do something to reduce or retain of students that drop out. In 1999, more than 96% of primary enrolment in Cambodia has increased, the retention helps by providing breakfast to the students. Most of the students have to choose to attend school or help their family (World Food Programme, 1999).

I will survey by interviewing. The survey will focus only on the students that drop out of high school and their parents. The survey will focus only on the students and parents of the drop out high school; both of these parties will receive separate questionnaires. This research will begin next year: 2019. Basically, this second term of exploration in research we focused on writing our research proposal to the school so we can get the fund and the agreement to start our research idea.

One of my dream in the future is to be the screenwriter so why not start it now? In Liger Leadership Academy I got an amazing opportunity to be a part of the traveling theater group. Create a Traveling Liger Community Theatre troupe which would include a variety of performances written and performed by Liger students that have social impact on Cambodian culture. This could include short plays around meaningful topics such as healthy habits, sanitation, etc. Musical and other creative performances would be developed. The portable set and cast would perform perhaps one weekend a month in different rural villages with performances lasting 1 to 2 hours. Last round we focused on writing our own play which our main theme is a healthy relationship. This round is the opposite our main focus is actually doing the play that we collaboratively wrote it. The play was around the goal who judged by the society because of how she looked. There are two spirits, one is beautiful and slim, another is overweight, buy eat whatever she wants. Then she realized no matter how she looked she’s still judged by the society anyways. Just be who you are and be yourself. I am one of the actors. I represented the beautiful spirit. On Wednesday, 12, 2018 we performed our first play to Liger students; this play was organized by the students in the group: the stage, costumes, acting, and screenplay. We got a lot of excellent comments which encourage us to push ourselves harder in the future when we perform to the local audiences.

 

This term we’re seriously planning for the workshop with the students. Our first experimental workshop was working with students at the Dey Dos high school in Ta Kmao. This was a very successful workshop and we believe these workshop should be distributed to the students in the provinces. What worked best during the workshop is that the two teams complete their film very quickly. This is the experimental team where it is close to our school. We have some feedback, and problems we can improve later in the future for the workshop in the provinces. We need to push the students to write the script because it will be more professional and that’s the reality. Maybe next time give them the specific theme, so they have a more specific idea of what to write. Also, we need to give a specific timing to them so can be on time. We really need to have a better communication with the director. Most importantly ask the students how can we improve and how can they improve at the end of the workshop.

ILO stands for International Labour Organization. In this exploration, we collaborate with ILO to facilitate soft skills training. Basically, students read and understood one or two skill-building modules, created by the ILO – a UN agency – specifically for corporate-level training. Students then offered these training modules to high schools/universities in Cambodia, monitoring as other students engaged in the self-guided modules.

Before you lead others, first lead yourself, lastly together lead for results. On Friday, International Labour Organisation Collaboration team went to Happy Chandara School to offer the “leadership” soft skill training modules in Khmer (we translated the module ourselves) because our main target audiences are high schools/universities in Cambodia.  We were there to mentor and answer questions but mainly this training is students engaged in the self-guided (in teams).

Frisbee League Pioneer is to create the first Cambodian frisbee league that is replicable and scalable, enabling empowerment of rural girls in Cambodia, challenging female stereotyping, through facilitation of a more gender-equitable environment.

Gender inequality affects many facets of society: business, education, and sports; Cambodia is no exception. Many Cambodians, not unlike others, have developed a mindset against girls playing sports. However, contemporary society is deconstructing these stereotypes by embracing girls in the sports field. With 65% of the whole population being under the age of 30, it is crucial to educate and empower the youth of today to support youth of the future.

Achieving gender equity has been, and is still, a struggle the world tries to overcome; it’s also listed as the fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Although the goal is set to be attained in 12 years time, it’s never too early to start taking action now.

Our pilot project is designed to address this goal. We envision that our league will impact a wide range of communities listed underneath Community-Based Development. With a valid measurement and proof of the shift in opinions on girls’ enrollments in sports, we might present a White Paper to the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports and possibly establish a female sports policy. Introducing frisbee is merely our entry point, rather, equity and female empowerment is our end goal.

On Thursday, 6, 2018, early morning, nine of our of us in this exploration traveled to these schools to run initial frisbee sessions and gauge interest among the girls for the league. We have about thirty minutes with the girls to convince and throw frisbee around with them.  

We were blown away by the results. They loved playing frisbee. A few voluntarily came back for the afternoon session after school to play more. Some said they had never played sport before, because of social or family pressure. All in all, 266 girls indicated today that they were keen to join the league.

Additionally, on Wednesday this week, we went to the four schools again to do our official pitch to the girls that were interested. We wrote down all of their names and around 200 hundred students are still interested. This means we really more discs before January when we start our training sections with the girls.

We are all really proud of our solid work so and we’ll continue to push ourselves to work harder. Most important we need to find sponsors before the training starts. 

The first round we did research about the healthy relationship then we design the workshop for teenagers. This round we distributed the workshop to Liger Juniors and Seniors. At the sharation we discuss gender based violence. This a tough topic to discuss, but this is a very important topic. Gender-based violence is mostly violence against women. Why only women? One reason why is that the society had taught boys and girls differently when they’re born. Actually, we are all born to be the same. Boys taught to watch violence cartoon and girls taught to play with Barbie. This is why men are more violent than women. Another topic that we brought up is consent, watch our video below for more information. We entered this video into the Gender-Based Violence competition (November is a gender-based violence day) and we won first place.