Yesteryear, students of the second cohort here at Liger, usually called Juniors, all underwent a round of an exploration of Outdoor Leadership; we all received training to become outdoor leaders and environmental stewards by our wonderful facilitators here at Liger. They say “sharing is caring”, so this year, that’s what we’re going to be doing: we’re going to be sharing to other people our knowledge and skills of outdoor leadership, so they, too, can become outdoor leaders and environmental stewards and protect this wonderful country.
The ultimate and main goal of this project, Cambodian Youth Outdoor Leadership Program, is to create young Cambodian outdoor leaders. This first round of the project was focused entirely on the method we’re using to create outdoor leaders and the following rounds will follow everything that is done in this round as it finalized the main ideas of this project and the way we are going to carry it out. Aside from that, the succeeding rounds will contribute to attaining the goal by translating the plans into Khmer as everything will be done with Cambodian students and actually creating outdoor leaders.
Students in different parts of Cambodia, especially rural parts, will be selected and trained under the workshop we will have created halfway through this school year. The workshop will be centered around five main categories, each offering a unique set of skills and knowledge not taught in Cambodian government schools: Leadership, Medical Health, Risk Management, Nature Appreciation, and Wilderness Skills. In the process of achieving the big goal and before Cambodian students can protect the environment, they must first learn about it. After having learned those things, they will go on trips into the wild and put what they learned to use and display outdoor leadership. At the end of the whole “course”, they will be required to start and work on a mini project to raise awareness about the environment – sharing their knowledge acquired during our workshop – and create change of their own in the place that they live in.
I enjoyed tremendously being a part of the first step in creating young outdoor leaders of Cambodia. The training we, students here at Liger, received last year was very educational and made us think in many new ways of the environment and we would like to share that knowledge to the rest of Cambodia’s youth so that they can also help protect the country’s environment. Summing up, I’m excited to see the change this incredible project will create throughout this year.