Changing Cambodia 2017-2018
My life this year started, “Be the change you want to see in the world” (by Mahatma Gandhi). This quote guided me to travel through the rest of the school year at Liger. My ambition was to create positive changes to this country, Cambodia; I want to see changes, and to see Cambodia becomes an outstanding country from other nations around Southeast-Asia by the time I reach my life-retirement. From this ambition, I deemed to take agencies in my life this year. I have accomplished and dispatched in many events: engineering internship, robotics competition, took an AP computer science exam, and give Ted Talk. My next stride will be full of dust and snow, the path will be illusive I do not know what will be happen next, all I knew is Cambodia needs improvement on technology field.
It is my second year of high school, life is always occupied with works. The year began, I realized that in order, “To move the world, we must move ourselves”–Socrates. The two quotes above motivated me to build up my self-esteemed in creating positive changes to Cambodia and to myself. As the passion built up, I began my first step: summer internship.
From years to years, Cambodia takes a very big leap in its engineering field. Based on GeeksinCambodia published in 2015–a news website about technology in Cambodia–has stated that 90 percent of the population each own a mobile phone. The data clearly demonstrates that the majority of the population in Cambodia have access to technology. Our government attempt to do their best to grab its citizens attention on technology by promoting through STEM Festival, Maker Faire, and other collaborative events. These events ruffled numerous of change-agents to get involved into technology: I then knew Arrowdot.
That was when I move myself!
I spent my summer-break mainly on internship at a startup called Arrowdot. During the internship, I had experienced how the society works in Cambodia. I learned to manage my own budget, transportation, and food. It was the moment where collaboration with university students and I initiated. In the internship, it was an elusive advantageous to help the company while enhanced myself. At Arrowdot, one of the missions was to give extra class to university students. My responsibility in the internship was to setup the plan for the experiments.
That responsibility required me to be familiar with the concept and turn it into an ecstatic experiments. To be honest for some labs, it took me a bunch of time to get it done: the labs was sophisticated for me. The CEO of the company always inspirit me to try again and again even though it was difficult. These hard works that were put into each project payed-off when noticing those students was full of energetic with their lab. All of them leaved the class with smiles! However it not finished, after each session that the students finished, they required to take the exam in order to graduated from Arrowdot. I was awe that some of them admitted their knowledge to me. The students seeked for supports whenever they perplex in any subjects. From this, students can master concepts at university which lead to a higher chance to be employed.
The internship was terminated, I realized that Cambodia has many change agents in technology. That internship made me gained confidence to help my country where that led me to have a Ted Talk about Cambodian Technology.
Ted Talk believes that ideas worth spreading. Yearly, International School of Phnom Penh (ISPP) hosted a Ted Talk event, and I been hunting to be one of the speakers since 2016. Finally, I got selected to be one of the speakers in 2017. I decided to give a speech that combated the old mineset that prevent those intelligent-engineers from being successful. It was a 12 minutes talk, it included example of engineering projects that are inspirational: mind control robots, sand management system, and international robotic competition. The speech has given to about more than 150 participants and has posted in the TEDx Youtube channel.
I believed that it was a number priority to change Cambodian perspective on the engineering field since words is sharper than knife–if that works it will bring many supports in engineering field. This reflects, if majority of the Cambodia keep in mind that our technology is not as high level as other country, than it is a setback that prevents Cambodian engineers to be developed. As mentioned, it is important to first change people’s perspectives while time move on technology will be better and better.
I understand changes does not have to happen from young generations, changes can happen by anyone regardless of their age, skin color, or gender. People always contribute positive changes to the country, they did not realized that they did it because change–to me–happened from one effort of doing it, not from what one think of doing it. The two examples above were the two that I always memorised. Throughout the whole year I might contributed greater than two. Everyone should have a fidelity inside them and they should begin the journey of small actions because “Idea don’t come fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started” – Mark Zuckerberg
Here is my timeline in 2017-2018 (YEAR SIXTH)
