Cambodia Voluntary Work

This is my foreword of report of my Cambodia Project: (hope it creates resonance with more people)

Project Discovering Cambodia is an excellent initiative which exposed participants to an international organization, for this instance, a non-government organization (NGO) to learn how to conduct sustainable community services for the poor.

The capitalism world has come to a crossroad where people are facing humanity greatest challenge. The distribution of wealth is imbalance in which 80% of the world’s assets are owned by top 20% population of the social economic pyramid which is known by the 80/20 principle.

USM is aware of this global issue and strives to educate the students to work on the undertakings that benefit the world in lieu of merely providing human resources to meet the manpower demand of the job market. Hence, the newly established mission of USM which bestowed this institution with APEX status is to empower the bottom billion of the population to transform into a better social economic well being.

The verdicts are to create profitable business to raise the living quality of the poor, respect cultural diversity and conserve ecological integrity of the planet for the future generations.

Embracing this central idea, we started our very first step by learning the proven market-based approach practiced by the experienced NGO. We have chosen our collaboration partner-International Development Enterprise (IDE) as our learning example. IDE has taken the market approach by empowering the poor to sustain their socio economical status. Helping the people without really involving the locals to help themselves is the form of aids which are futile because local people will tend to be more dependant to external aids in the coming times.

Instead, IDE develops the communities simply using the natural law of economics-providing supply and creating demand.“The invisible hand” will integrate the local communities to do what is good for them. All the NGO need to do is initiate the product designs/ innovations to sparks the minds of the underserved, building supply chain value, creating demand by education and instill awareness. The starting points could be the basic amenity, living requirement or even the tool of earning a living. Water, toilets, food, capital, health and electricity are something that is lack of for these unfortunate.

If we are talking about being world class contributor, then the world should be defined in the context of empowering the bottom billion (80%) of the population in the world which earns less than USD3 per day.

Having this perspective in mind instilled before we went for the survey. We actually able to learn more by experienced during the survey. As for post trip effort, this report is to be published with the aim of spreading the seed of this new kind of idea. It is not novel but it is the trend of the future as foreseen.

Lastly, we would like to held social entrepreneurship as a votive and not in vain to be justified as a virtue for every future youth leaders.