ABOUT SAOYUTH

Schools Led by Students

April 6, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Feature Story, LIFT
1 Comment

Although poor funding is almost certainly the main obstacle standing between Cambodian students and an internationally competitive education, it is certainly not the only thing that needs to be addressed for the Kingdom to start producing world-ready intellectuals. Dara Saoyuth looks at plans turn things around that will put students behind the wheel.

learning how to grow vegetables

learning how to grow vegetables / by: World Education

Carrying a green sack on her right shoulder, 7-year-old Chan Eng was opening a rubbish bin along the riverside with a 10-year old boy, looking for empty cans and bottles to sell. Last year she went to a school and studied in grade 1, but three months later, she had to drop out of school because her parents, who work as scavengers, could not afford to pay for her studies. She was asked to scavenge and to make some money to support the family.

She is not the only child in this predicament. About one-third of children in Cambodia aged five to fourteen work, leaving them with less time to concentrate on school, according to a document released in January 2010 by the American Institutes for Research.

In article 48 of the Cambodian Constitution adopted in 1999, it states that “the State shall protect children from acts that are injurious to their educational opportunities,health and welfare”. It is also a government policy to provide children with basic education, from grade 1 to grade 9.

The Child Friendly School, or CFS, is a programme that has been tested and practiced in Cambodia by the Ministry of Education and its development partners in order to implement this policy.

“CFS is a school where educating techniques focus more on children’s rights and all stakeholders have to work together to produce a learning environment that is more friendly to students and to assure them that they can get knowledge, have life skills, have good behaviour and be able to live in society peacefully,”said Mom Meth, a Technical Assistant at the Secondary Department of the Ministry of Education.

The CFS programme is also focused on child centered learning, which means that children take anactive role in their learning and work in a more independent way to discover their potential and uniqueness, while the teachers’ role is to facilitate them.

There are six dimensions in the CFS programme. The first dimension is inclusive education. The second is effective learning; the third,health, safety and child protection;the fourth, gender sensitivity; the fifth, engagement with children,parents and communities; and the sixth, support from educational management structure.

The CFS pilot programme was implemented in 2000 by the Ministry of Education. Some NGOs and development partners such as UNICEF, Save the Children and Kampuchean Action for Primary Education (KAPE) are helping with some primary schools in Cambodia.

Kou Boun Kheang, a Senior Education Program Advisor at Save the Children, said the organisation has supported CFS since 2000, but is mainly focused on the first, second and sixth dimensions that relate to schools seeking out excluded children, effective learning and school management structure.

“We look around so we can clearly find children who are not able to go to school,” Kou Bounkheang said when explaining how they find excluded children. He added that after finding them, his organisation will then make contact with their parents, explain things to them and give a loan or scholarship to the family and children to make sure they can go to school.

Minister of Education Im Sethy officially approved and announced on December 14, 2007, that all schools in the country should implement the Child Friendly School programme.In the Education Sector Plan for 2006-2010 from the ministry,one priority is to initiate CFS in all 24 provinces to build some quality in basic education.

Por Sokhoeun, a director at the Hor Namhong Sangker secondary school in Kampong Cham, said he adopted the CFS programme in March 2010 and has organised classrooms, school environments,teaching and learning techniques based on the CFS programme.

“It’s different from schools that haven’t practiced the programme because here, students are mobile from one room to another according to the subjects they are studying, unlike in previous times when they had to sit in one room for all subjects,”said Por Sokhoeun. He added that this has improved the quality of education because both the students and teachers can find all the equipment they need for each subject.

Por Sokhoeun gave, as an example,a geography class where there are maps, globes, pictures and tools related to the subject of geography, so students feel they are sitting in a room full of knowledge and they can absorb as much as they want.

No matter how good the programme is, it has not yet reached all schools in the Kingdom, especially for secondary education.

Liesbeth Roolvink, a Basic Education Advisor at World Education,said: “Officially the policy refers to CFS as a policy for basic education. However, the strong focus has been on primary schools and only a small number of pilot schools in lower secondary have applied the policy so far.”

She also acknowledged that the number is expanding and mentioned the project she is working on, Improved Basic Education in Cambodia(IBEC), is being implemented in 101 secondary schools in Kampong Cham, Kratie and Siem reap,and Care International is supporting it in lower secondary schools in Ratanakiri.

“For some schools that never received support in the process of adopting CFS, this may be a little difficult and therefore, they have decided to make three different development stages, basic, medium and advanced,” said Liesbeth Roolvink. “The basic level has a small number of very basic CFS requirements that schools are expected to do and this should be possible with the use of programme based budget and guidance of district technical monitoring teams.Once schools have the basic requirements in place and successfully implemented, they will move up to the next development level and for this level, there are new and more activities that must be implemented,”she explained.

Chum Sophea, director of the primary education department at the ministry of education, agreed that the level of practicing CFS is not the same for all schools based on the resources each school has.

“In some primary schools, there are only classes from grade 1 to grade 2 or 3 with a few teachers, so practicing CFS cannot be the sameas other schools that have enough resources,” said Chum Sophea, who added that the ministry plans to build more rooms and provide more teachers for schools that don’t haveclasses from grade 1 to 6 and lack teachers, so every school can develop their level of the CFS proagramme.

“Now we have 6,767 primary schools across the country and we plan to build around 400 more this year, so with 95-96 percent of children in school presently, there will be no Cambodian children that are out of school in 2015.”

 

By: Dara Saoyuth
This article was publish on LIFT, Issue 65 published on April 06, 2011

My stand upper – Exercise in video production course

April 5, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Personal Interest/Experience
2 Comments

It is one week already after this video was submitted to my video production lecturer, but I just had time to upload it. I know that there are some errors in the video since it’s our practical exercise related to stand upper lesson. I was asked to act as I was at the scene reporting the situation in Japan after the damage of nuclear power plants followed by subsequent earthquake. Let’s check it out and give me some comments for future improvement!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOoUb8ZN2K8&w=480&h=390]
05/04/2011
By: Dara Saoyuth

DMC to host a party for Khmer new year

April 2, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Inform

Department of Media and Communication (DMC) is celebrating a party, which is participated by all year level students, former students of DMC, foreign and Cambodian lecturers. The event covers a lot of activities including praying ceremony, Khmer traditional game, singing, dancing of new style and nice dinner. DMC always hold the party annually in order to celebrate for upcoming Khmer New Year.

[slideshow]

02/04/2011
Text by: Sun Narin & Dara Saoyuth
 

Cambodia’s Manuscripts conference

March 30, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Conference Notice

This evening, I’ve spent about two hours joining a conference on Cambodia’s Manuscripts. I have to say that the whole presentations and discussions are very wonderful and that’s why I’ve posted audio recording of the entire conference for those of you who haven’t joint the event. Please find the links below. Cheers,

By: Dara Saoyuth
30/03/2011

Nokia E7 now available in Cambodia

March 23, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
From my fans
3 Comments

[slideshow]

Phnom Penh, Cambodia –Nokia Cambodia announced the arrival of a latestbusiness smartphone modelNokia E7 in the Kingdom at agrand launching eventyesterday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Held at Studio 182, above Topaz Restaurant, the event ignited excitement among some 60 participants including members of the local media and prominent corporate people from both local and international companies. They were all fascinated about how powerfulNokia E7was in meetingtheir professional and private needs.

Nokia E7 is equipped with a 4-inch AMOLED touchscreen display featuring Nokia’s ClearBlack technology. Business users will find that it is the perfect shape and size to work on documents, review spreadsheets, or read and edit slides. With Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync on board, the Nokia E7 provides direct, real-time and secure access to corporate email inboxes and other personal applications.

The device captures High-resolution photos and HD video with the its 8 megapixel camera and dual LED flash and provides a wide range of music, games and socials apps. It also supports 3G networks and Wi-Fi connections.

“People are continuing to look for solutions that suit both their work and personal life; in business circles this is known as the ‘consumerization’ of IT. The Nokia E7 gives people the confidence to bring their own smartphones to the workplace to connect securely to corporate messaging servers,” said Mesbah Uddin, Business Development for Nokia Cambodia and Laos.“On the other hand, whether you are an artist or entrepreneur, the Nokia E7 is the only smartphone you will need to handle your work, to conduct your dailypersonal lives,” he added.

During the launching event, Daniel Parkes, Country Manager for CB Richard Ellis (Cambodia) Co., Ltd, who is a user of Nokia E7,enthusiastically shared with the audience that Nokia E7 was key to having a successful day in or out of the office. “It is a perfect device for me. Having it with me, I feel that my office is where I am. Being on the move, I am still able to open and read corporate emails that I have received, make a response, edit attached office documents, etc.” “You don’t have to scrutinize screen as it is wide, giving bigger display of characters. Typing is fast with its QWERTY keyboard,” he said.

PreapSovath, Cambodia’s most well know pop star, who also runs salon and restaurant businesses in Phnom Penh laid out how useful Nokia E7 to him. “I spend most of my time singing and performing. But I have to manage my business too. I am really excited about Nokia E7 and to my view it is a small laptop. Not only does it enable me to access all my emails, but it also my home of entertainment: watching movies, listening to music, playing games, just to name a few. What I find amzing is its HD camera that you take pictures and make a video of high resolution, edit it and share it with colleagues and friends connecting it with HDMI cable.”

DanielParkes and PreapSovath, as well as the rest of the participants, were particularly impressed with Nokia E7’s high capabilities of safely keeping important work files and protecting important data with remote device management options.

Estimated retail price at US$650, Nokia E7 will be available from 19 March 2011 in two colors, black and silver andaccording to Nokia’s representative, Nokia would present a Nokia Mobile Holder, a Nokia Mobile charger and a pouch to the first 100 corporate consumers for every purchase of Nokia E7.

Original Text by NOKIA Company
Issued on 12/03/2011

Related Post

A day in the life of artists – Moeu Diyadaravuth

March 23, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
LIFT
3 Comments

“A picture has been said to be something between a thing and a thought”. It was said by Samuel Palmer, a British landscape painter and etcher. However, this sentence cannot fully explain a day in the life of a painter like Moeu Diyadaravuth who has been working since 2005 as an office assistant and graphic artist at Our books, a non-profit organization that creates and distributes books throughout Cambodia and provides illustrations for various publications.

I’ve spent last Thursday morning with a 28-year-old Moeu Diyadaravuth to reveal his experience of being an artist. In an apartment near Royal University of Fine Arts, Moeu Diyadaravuth was sitting in his office room at his desk checking his phone when I arrived, and he put it down when our conversation began. Everything on the desk was in order, and in the left corner, I could see a pile of picture he has done while there was a box of some foreign cartoon books on the top right hand side of the desk and below that was a large white box which he called a light box that he normally uses to ink the picture, copy the sketch to another white paper using a pen, by putting papers on that box and turn on the light so that he could see the sketch clearly and copy it easily.

He told me that he’d just finished drawing pictures for an organization and that he was free to talk. It seemed to be a bit frustrated for me that I could not see his drawing processes; however, it turned into a good chance that he had more time to explain me about his works and show his achievements.

Moeu Diyadaravuth can make three different kinds of pictures like black-and-white picture, watercolor painting, and digital painting. But, he said the most popular ordered picture is a third category because color from computer has better quality.

Moeu Diyadaravuth cannot start drawing until he understand what his customers want and that require him to talk or read the text to understand the context. Even though most of the time he can imagine the picture as soon as the customers tell their idea, some challenges cannot be an exception.

“Our customers want picture that fit to their contents, but they are not professional, so there are chances that we cannot draw for them because sometimes they are too imaginative,” he said, explaining that drawings aren’t like video that have action, so you have to capture the main idea in one image.

When it comes to being a good artist, he advised many hours of practicing and researching other people’s work. “Drawing is one of my leisure activities, I read some others artists’ books and Google things I know I’m not good at. This helps me improve my skill constantly.”

[slideshow]

By: Dara Saoyuth
This article was publish on LIFT, Issue 63 published on March 23, 2011

My First Column in LIFT Magazine – Traffic in the City

March 16, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Commentary, LIFT
4 Comments

Road blocks aren’t just an annoyance, they are also standing in the way of developing a safer and more modern city.

The traffic in Phnom Penh city is getting heavier every day because of the growth in the population and the fact that more people now own vehicles. Traffic jams usually happen when people leave their houses for their workplace in the morning and when they return home in the evening.

You might be late for class or work and fail to withstand the stress of getting stuck on the road. Even emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks, when every second counts, are sometimes caught in bad traffic because people cannot move aside easily to free up some space for these vehicles. Imagine if a seriously injured person was in an ambulance waiting to get to hospital or people were waiting for the fire brigade to help them put out a fire. There are a lot of factors that contribute to traffic congestion.

One thing that is usually unreported is roads being blocked when there is a celebration like a wedding. Sometimes they block only half the road and leave some spaces for vehicles, but there are also times when they block the whole road. Even though it’s not a main road, every road is linked. For example, when there are a lot of vehicles on a main road, people can turn off and use a smaller road, but what happen if these roads are blocked for a party? I have seen two wedding parties being celebrated on the opposite sides of a road which was completely blocked. People get struck in a traffic jam because they cannot turn to right or left.

Wedding ceremonies usually take place in front of the bride’s house. They turn the road into a dinning and cooking area. In the countryside where it is not so crowded and there are not so many vehicles this is not a problem.

Nowadays city people not only ask permission to celebrate a party, but they also ask permission to block the road. I think this should be reconsidered in a city where millions of people are living and the numbers of vehicles keep increasing. I think if people want to throw a party and there is no free space inside their house, they should consider celebrating at a restaurant or rent a building.

Putting small business of parking vehicles on the footpaths also contributes to congestion in the city. According to the law on land traffic adopted by the National Assembly on December 20, 2006, Article 5 of the law states that “sidewalks are not allowed for vehicles to park.”

However, the sidewalks are still being used as parking places when customers want to go in and buy goods from stores along a road. So far there has been some action taken by Phnom Penh police against people doing business on the sidewalks, but it has not been very effective.

In an article published on The Phnom Penh Post on January 14, 2010, police fanned out across Phsar Kandal I commune to inform shopkeepers and street venders that they could no longer block the area’s pavements and roadways with their displays, and threatened to confiscate the goods of offending merchants.

In an interview Hem Him, Phsar Kandal I commune’s chief of police, said “the commune’s new policy on sidewalks and road use is part of the Phnom Penh municipality’s plan to widen the city’s streets and avoid the congestion caused by venders using streets as their own land”.

In addition, some people who usually travel with their carts selling goods along the roads just park when they find customers and they also make the traffic worse.

There is also the issue of people using their mobile phones while driving. For motorcycle riders, they sometimes place the phone next to their ear inside their helmet so they can hide from traffic wardens, while car owners usually drive with one hand on the wheel and a phone in the other hand. Even though their activities can sometimes be hidden from the traffic police, they cause trouble to other people.

When people focus on talking on their phone, they drive their vehicles carelessly, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. This not only can cause traffic jams, but can also cause accidents and as a result, some innocent people might be injured by them.

As noted by government, NGOs and other relevant agencies, casualties from road accidents are now the second leading cause of death in Cambodia. Among the leading causes of traffic accidents, the first is human error followed by bad roads, vehicle defects and weather conditions.

Some factors mentioned above are manmade, meaning that the authorities and citizens can help eliminate these things, so why we don’t try together to improve the traffic in the city we live in.

By: Dara Saoyuth
This article was publish on LIFT, Issue 62 published on March 16, 2011

Outside shooting for the first time

March 10, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Personal Interest/Experience
3 Comments

It’s one month already that we have started our video production course. We have learnt a lot in both theoretical  and practical things. However, today is our first day to take camera to shoot outside in a class assignment. The topic is about entertaining places in Phnom Penh. We are lucky enough to have chosen Olympic Stadium as our shooting place because we know clearly where we can shoot since we all used to go there.

The location is good, but difficulties cannot be the exception. Some main challenges for us are including sound operating and sources choice.

I have posted some photos during our video shooting, but please don’t laugh at us because it’s our first experience:

[slideshow]
By: Dara Saoyuth
10/03/2011

Is the Sam Rainsy Party’s candle burning out?

March 9, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Feature Story, LIFT
1 Comment
Sam Rainsy Party

Image via Wikipedia

People are sitting in a room looking at a large TV screen. They are watching a person on the screen and if they want to speak, they have to get out of their seats and go to a desk and talk in a microphone so that the person on the screen can hear and respond. This is the method employed by Sam Rainsy Party members to communicate with their leader, Sam Rainsy, who is now living in self-exile in France.

Sam Rainsy was convicted in January 2010 of destroying public property and racial incitement with Vietnam by pulling up border posts along the Vietnamese border in Svay Rieng province in 2009. On March 1, 2011, Cambodia’s Supreme Court rejected his appeal and his sentence of two years in jail still stands.

“The court is used as a political tool to shut Sam Rainsy’s mouth or eliminate him from the political arena since he is the leader of the opposition party,” said Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the Sam Rainsy Party.

On the other hand, Cheam Yeap, a senior Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker, said the ruling party did not order Sam Rainsy to remove the border posts. “Our country has law, so Sam Rainsy has to face court because of his wrongdoing, and if one day in the future I do something wrong, of course, I will face the court as well,” said Cheam Yeap.

A press release issued on February 22 by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights stated “the convictions against Sam Rainsy may leave the country’s largest opposition party without a leader at the next general election”.

Sam Rainsy fled the country in early 2009 and will serve 12 years in jail if he returns to Cambodia because in a separate case, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced him to an additional 10 years in jail on charges of forging public documents and disinformation after convicting him of disinformation and falsifying public documents.

The executive director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID) in Cambodia, Hang Chhaya, said what has concerned him is that Cambodia is a democratic country, so Sam Rainsy’s case should not have reached the level of removing his parliamentary immunity and sentencing him since he had rights as a politician. “What the ruling party want is to make a good leader who people see, love and support, have to stay abroad as long as possible,” said Hang Chhaya.

While Prime Minister Hun Sen can stand and talk to CPP members and his supporters directly, Sam Rainsy needs support from technology to be able to communicate with SRP members and supporters.

However, Yim Sovann said the fact that Sam Rainsy is not in Cambodia is not a problem for the party. “If you want to meet the party leader, we can make a phone call or video conference that you can see the picture and there is no difference in communication by having or not having him present,” said Yim Sovann, adding that Sam Rainsy is still the party leader who leads meetings and keeps communicating between all levels of leaders and members.

To gain more support in the upcoming election, the HRP and SRP have been working on merging the two parties. After the 2008 national election, on January 15, 2009, Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha singed on a joined declaration officially establishing the Democratic Movement for Change. Since then the alliance has not reached 100 percent agreement and recently each party created a working group of five people to discuss the merger.

Mu Sochua, a SRP lawmaker and one of the five people in a merger group on the SRP side, said some conflict of ideas and misunderstandings from the past were the reasons for slowing the merger. However, she said she believed it would be successful soon. “We are democratic people and we have the same goal,” Mu Sochua said.

Mu Sochua said she was sure of success in the next election when the alliance reaches full agreement. She gave as an example Kampot province, where the SRP needs about 10,000 votes more to get one more parliament seat, however the HRU gets more than 14,000 votes. “Because we were not united at that time, about 14,000 votes were useless because none of us got any seats from there,” she said.

“Previously, we didn’t work well on the merger, but now we have a clear objective and we have clear steps to take,” Keat Sukun, a coordinator in merger group on the HRP side, said. He added that both sides had recently found common ground for a lasting unification of the parties.

Keat Sukun said that in Cambodia, each party cannot do everything alone and unification is very important in terms of exchanging human resources.

“It is the right decision to join as an alliance,” said Phnom Penh-based political analyst Chea Vannath, who explained that the seat allocation formula in Cambodia makes small political parties waste a lot of votes if they are not united.

However, she said she is not sure if this unification can last much longer because based on her observations, it would be easy to break up.

“To unite successfully, it’s very important to have trust building between the two parties, as wife and husband do,” said Chea Vannath. “We have to think that there will be a lot of obstacles with each step we take, and if we can trust each other, this unification will last forever.”

“While the frog tries harder, the snake also tries harder,” said Cheam Yeap, explaining that the ruling party was also working harder. Cheam Yeap said the ruling party did not fear the union of opposition parties.

However, Cheam Yeap said: “All CPP members are not advised to ride a horse with a free hand.” He added that they are not just sitting there happy with their victory, but they are working to keep it.

By: Dara Saoyuth

Additional reporting by Sok Eng
This article was publish on LIFT, Issue 61 published on March 09, 2011

Nokia to establish a new manufacturing site in Vietnam

March 4, 2011
Dara Saoyuth
Technology

Increasing capacity to connect the next billion to the Internet

MOU signing

MOU signing / Photo supplied by NOKIA

Espoo, Finland – Nokia’s ambition is to connect the next billion people to the Internet. As a major step towards achieving this goal, Nokia today announced plans to establish a new manufacturing site near Hanoi in northern Vietnam. Nokia plans an initial investment of approximately EUR 200 million, with further size able investments thereafter. In a ceremony that took place in Hanoi, Vietnam, the representatives of the Vietnamese government and Nokia signed a Memorandum of Understanding marking the beginning of a phase of preparations ahead of the targeted opening of the new plant in 2012. The site would further expand Nokia’s manufacturing network, which currently consists of ten major facilities in nine countries.

Nokia’s position in growth economies is strong, largely thanks to its powerful range of feature phones. The new manufacturing site is being established to meet the growth in demand for these phones, as well as help Nokia to deliver a contemporary mobile experience to the next billion consumers all over the world. The opportunity is huge: Almost 90{0a5c1eeb84ccc7c2d601964b33dd4fc73dc6a68f91616e3e53041e90b1033ab3} of the world’s population lives within range of a mobile signal, yet there are3.2 billion people who do not own a mobile device. And of the estimated 3.7 billion people who do own a mobile device, fewer than half use it to access the Internet. Said Esko Aho, Executive Vice President, Nokia:”Only about 30 percent of the world’s population is currently online, and we believe we can play a major role in connecting the next billion not just to their first phone but to their first internet and application experience.”

“I am extremely excited about this opportunity and about the support and commitment that Vietnam has offered to Nokia, ” said Juha Putkiranta, Senior Vice President, Nokia. “This new manufacturing site will play a key role in our effort to connect the next billion to the web.”

Vietnam emerged as a country that has both the location and developing infrastructure that made it a good choice for Nokia. Nokia first started selling products in Vietnam in 1996. Since then, Nokia has helped millions in Vietnam become connected through its mobile phone technology and network infrastructure.

Nokia has a global manufacturing network stretching from Latin America (Brazil and Mexico) to Europe(Finland, Hungary, Romania, the UK) and Asia (China, India, Korea).

Article by: NOKIA
04/03/2011