Work starts




The last two days and the next two days we are having our first few stakeholder meetings.


Yesterday we met with the local TVET centre - Technical and Vocational Education and Training. They provide training in things like Mechanics, IT, Silk production, Sewing, Mushroom growing and Air Con. The local centre mainly focuses on Mechanics, IT and Air con. The courses are free, they have low entry requirements and are very catered to the student, so they seem like a no brainer -  but a lot of Khmer, even those on VSO with me, don't know what TVET does or offers. So the director that we met with really wants us to promote it. As far as I can tell, it's been around for over 15 years, but uptake and awareness are very low.


Then today we met with the director of one of the Youth Clubs at which we and the Entrepreneurship subteam will be running sessions. The aim of Employability sessions is to prepare the youth for job applications and help them find jobs - Khmer have good access to the internet through smartphones, but they don't know where to look for jobs. They're very good at social media! A few of us have been bemused by the fact that the Khmer volunteers are more phone-obsessed than the UK!
So the Youth Club meeting today aimed to find out what they wanted to learn more about. It wasn't quite as helpful as we might have liked - not all of our questions were a answered - but we have a rough plan for the 6 two hour sessions that we will run with the Youth Clubs from today.
We still have three more groups to meet with.


Besides meetings and planning, I have eaten more fruit and not been really sick again! (in case this is confusing, my TL thought that papaya may have been what gave me a night of sickness)
Last night I met my other host grandmother and some more of my host dad's family (it's fun - I never know who's going to turn up for dinner). We had some kind of melon I hadn't seen before (which they thought was cucumber!!) with this sweet juice made of palm sugar, coconut milk and water, which tasted like coconut-ish condensed milk. I'd been avoiding fruit, but I had about 6 Khmer watching me to see if I'd like it, so I felt the pressure. And then I wasn't sick all night. So I call that a victory.


This evening we had Khmer fried noodles, which was essentially pasta. It was really good, and because I've had rice for three meals a day almost every day since I arrived, it was even better:


Here are some fish from the garden eating my fingers when Sa and I were playing after work:


And here is a picture of some funny English on the front of one of the Khmer volunteer's notebook:

Sorry it's not the most interesting. The posts may be less often these days because there's less going on.

Comments

  1. Mum11 February 2020 at 11:44

    It is interesting to hear about, hope the sickness stays away.
    How do you think you will engage the young people?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Moli tirion12 February 2020 at 17:31

      The sickness did stay away 🎉 There is already some existing engagement because of the past cycles that have been run here. Most of the youth we are meeting want to come and learn. We just have to teach them more from what the last cycle taught. And we also have some new groups to start with.

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