Volunteer for Khmer Sight Foundation

I have volunteered to join teams of international eye doctors and Cambodian nurses in rural communities that lack access to medical facilities to provide eye screenings for potential patients who would receive free surgeries from the Khmer Sight Foundations (KSF). We try to find as many patient  with cataract and pterygium as possible to do a free surgery for them. So far, I had volunteered to for two eye screenings; one in Kampong Speu province and another one in suburban city with more poverty family. My position in this projects are mainly to do patients eyes test and to translate for foreigner doctors.  

Healthcare Exploration: Healthcare System in Cambodia

Cambodia health care system is getting better over time. We have access to the health center in almost all district in Cambodia, We provided vaccination to newborns, and free healthcare to the poor family. However, there are a lot of areas that we need to improve such as, advanced technology, quality medical resources, educated medical staffs, and good internal system. In the past, many people need to fly to other countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, China, or Japan to pursue their health problem. However, now a day people don’t really outside the country anymore. There are now many private clinics/hospital that is capable to do more intense and difficult treat. During our exploration, we went to many of the health-related organizations and public/private hospital to gather information on their perspective to the Cambodian healthcare system. The information gave us more broad and big ideas for our healthcare system. Traditional medicine was come out a lot in people perspective, and that’s going to be my next topic to research in round 2 exploration. I’m going to compare what are the differences between the traditional medicine and Western medicine. I might look closely on how it work/function and the different win tradition medicine to Western medicine.  

Mondulkiri Youth Camp

From April 2nd to the 6th, I was attending a youth camp in Mondulkiri that was run by the World Renew organization. It was a three days workshop with 68 participants came from four different provinces and Liger.

On the first day of the workshop, we got to learn about Nutrition. We learned about the three groups of food, the nutrient that our body needs daily, and many types of vegetables and fruits that contain difference nutrient. This was one of my favorite topics to learn because then I can take that information that I’ve learned to cook healthier food for my apartment mate. On the same day, we also got to learn about democracy leadership. There are three types of democracy leadership: autocratic, laissez-faire, and democratic. Autocratic is a type of leadership skill where leader tell their member what to do. Laissez-faire is when leader tell their member what to do or let them do the thing they want. Democratic is when the leader asks the member to give a voice of their ideas.   

On the second day, we got to learn about immigration in Cambodia. Many Cambodian moves to another country for many reasons: study, job, new home, family issue etc. We learned how to move to another country safely because many Cambodian immigrants were having issues in the foreign country after they move there.

On the third day was a special day for us because we got to lead the workshop. In the morning, I and the other three students including another eight students from the four provinces were doing a workshop on drugs. The workshop goes so well, the student has learned a lot from our activities while also have fun with it. At last, we got to show our educational short film and let them let create their own performance about drugs to perform to other students. In the afternoon, we also got to lead a workshop run by another group of Liger student about AIDS and HIV.  

One of my favorite highlights was at night of the last day. We got to see the performance from the Bunong people about the dance and music. We all really enjoyed this time, I got to dance, other people got to dance and we also got to take a photo together with the Bunong performer. After that, we had a campfire to finish the day.

Drugs Workshop

          Drugs is one of the biggest issues in Cambodia as well as the rest of the world. In my exploration, we are working with eight students from World Renew organization to raise an awareness about drugs in Cambodia. On March 17th, 2018, we had gone to Sway Rieng province to lead a workshop to raise awareness of the danger of drugs usage.

          In our workshop, we divided into four big topics: types and effects, drugs trafficking, prevention and methods, and Reasons and symptoms of drugs user. There were about 180 students showed up, as well as, local authorities. We divided the students into four teams and each team stays with one organizer that lead one topic and after that, we rotated four times so that each team gets a chance to learned all topics.

          During the workshop, the students participate very well. They asked good questions, wrote down important stuff, and answering questions very well. At the last minute of the workshop, we also get to show a short story that our team had made that was talking about the effects of drug usage in one family. It seems out that they really enjoyed the story, they were laughed, smile, and kept talking about the father character because he also there as well.

          Besides the workshop, we also premiered our educational, short film at night in the village that we ran the workshop. The turn out was amazing, with a lot of people, enjoying the film.

Gender Summit

We live in a society where human rights have never been equal. I and the other 11 students with two facilitators had created one workshop, call Gender Summit, where our goal is to Creating Humanitarian Awareness for the Necessity of Gender Equity (CHANGE). In this workshop we divided into four sessions under the theme of “Empower Change while Preserving Culture”. Our four sessions are power, economic, language, and culture. We ran this workshop in two days on the 26th (English) and 27th (Khmer) of January 2018.

We had invited around a hundred students from around Phnom Penh to participate in our event. During the event, I and another student has a job of making sure the event runs smoothly. So as I walked into each session, the students seem to participate a lot. They asked good questions, raise up good ideas, learned something new, and they also have fun with their teammate and their session leader.

At the end of the event, I can see that people have different opinion on gender equity based on where they live and what they have learned from their society. Some people have idea which I disagree, however, I can’t say that they are wrong because they lived in a different society where I do; there might something dangerous that limit them. Although, they have learned a lot and their ideas have changed a lot in the positive way of how to treat people in society.

Climate Summit

Climate Change is the biggest disaster on Earth. Climate Change can cause many things to happen like drought, flood, sea level rise, rising temperature, rising ocean acidification, and many more. Me and the other 11 students had run one workshop, call Climate Summit. Climate Summit is a workshop where different groups of people represents different country or region and they all need to come up with the solution to reduce the co2 emission. The co2 emission now a day is 4.5 degrees Celsius per century and the goal of this workshop is to reduce it to well below 2 degree Celsius per century. We had invited many schools around Cambodia to joint our workshop like JPA, Zaman, Little Heath, NFO, and Logos. The workshop was going pretty well, and at last they end up with the co2 emission of 2.6 degree Celsius which was not our goal but pretty good.

PHOTO COMING SOON

Vex Robortic

The robot is amazing, they can do many things where human can’t. In one of my exploration, we had learned about building and programming the robot. I used to do a competition in Singapore on Lego robot. This time we had to build our robot to compete in Taiwan for the Vex Robotic competition. I had worked as mechanical team to build the robot. For my experience work on mechanical was a bit difficult because Vex Robotic is new to us, so we need to understand of every part and what its job. Another problem is that we don’t have enough time and we also don’t have a clear design of the robot. For us to attend on the competition was awesome because we can represent Cambodia, but what’s more important is, we had inspire a lot of Cambodian students since we are the first team who join in this VEX competition from Cambodia. On the day of the competition we had met lots of amazing people. Something I find out that sock I was, one of the team controller had practice controlling for like two months and that almost the same amount of time for us to learn and work on the robot. However, we did our best for the competition, we end up with played six games we won three games. At last we also got one trophy the Judges Award. Then we spend the time left to enjoy Taiwan.

Timeline of White Building

White Building is one the most interesting and historical building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The White Building was designed and built in 1963  by Lu Ban Hap, a Cambodian architecture, and Vladimir Bodiansky a Russian engineer. This historical building was located in the center of Phnom Penh and was demolished in the summer of 2017 to make room for a modern facility built by the Arakawa company. Because this building is really interesting and have many histories under it, I have designed and 3D print the building to show how it looks like. Moreover, because of the building have six different buildings attached together, I had paint and design the individual building to show what it happen in each time.

 

Iron Deficiency

Anemia is one of the world health issue. You got anemia because of a condition in which there is a deficiency of red cells or of hemoglobin in the blood. Anemia are caused by three problem Iron deficiency, genetic (thalassemia), and parasite. In the world there’s about 20% of the population got anemia and in Cambodia there’s more than 50%, So anemia is one of the biggest health issue in Cambodia. In one of my exploration which is Iron deficiency we learned about Anemia that caused by iron deficiency. Iron deficiency mostly happened to the children and pregnant women. So you get iron deficiency because your get less iron in you body. So generally, men and non-menstruating women should receive about 10 mg of iron daily, menstruating or nursing women 15 mg, and pregnant women 30 mg daily. So what what kind of food that have a lot of iron? So meat, dark leafy greens, dark chocolate, liver have a lot of Iron. So if you eat it your body will get more iron. But what about the family that they don’t have ability to buy all of those food such as Cambodia. We have the solution for them it a lucky Iron Fish. Lucky Iron Fish is just a piece of Iron that design as a fish. The Lucky Iron Fish is made from natural ferrous iron, which is easily absorbed by the body and is safe.It help to solve this problem because if you use this fish to cook with you food (Must have water) for 10 minute with 1 liter of water your body can absorbed about 7 mg of iron. Because your body absorbed a small amount of iron so it will not effect to your body. The price of it just 8$ for Cambodian and 25$ for foreigner (but they get two, one for them and the other one will donate to Cambodia) but you can use it for 5 years, So this is why it’s the solution. We have work with the lucky Iron fish company to distribute the fish to difference family in Siem Reap. The fish that we had give to them is the fish that we get from donated by foreigner because of they were buy the fish and one donate to Cambodia, so we take that fish to give to villager at Siem Reap. So we have did workshop with the villager in three different village, some of them have used the fish before and some of them were new, this shows that the lucky iron fish in interesting to them. So we had give 400 fish to different family, so that mean we help 400 family to get rid out of iron deficiency and this is one of my changing Cambodia. We also take a risk to go to War museum and Akira landmine museum because this museum is connect to Khmer Rouge where I will learn about it in this year. We also go to different temple in Siem Reap to learn about the history. We really have a great time at there.

My 3D Disign Exploration

I use to learned about 3D Printing before, and I use Blender to animate my object. The minister of ministry of education had came to my school many times. The minister had interesting with one of the subject that we learned in Liger which is the 3D Printing class. So the minister had ask us to teach to the student at government school. To teach them 3D Printing they need to have computer, Most the student does not have computer but the school did. The mister had told us that the government had send computer to 150 school in cambodia. So to teach that much school we decided to create the video and teach them by the video because if we go straight to them it take long time to go because 150 school is a lot and we have to use a lot of money. First we decide to use 123D Design for the application to animate because most of my team they rather use 123D Design. When we go to one of the school in Phnom Penh (Chbar Ampov High School) which they have the computer. The computer at there can’t run the 123D Design so we decided to use another application that can run on this computer which is Free CAD. So right now we are create the video to show the student by this application (Free CAD). We was so proud at our self because the Minister is the one that ask us to do this mission for him and we had help many students from 150 school (a lot of people). This is one of the thing that I had change Cambodia because I get to teach about new technology to many student in many government school in Cambodia.