Liger meets Open Development Cambodia: Liger talents receive GIS certificates

Group photo between ODC team and Liger students

The Liger campus lies hidden behind some residential buildings in the outskirts of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. You wouldn’t expect the little oasis amidst the busy urban life with its countless motorbikes, tuktuks, street vendors and construction sites. However, when you enter the gate of the Liger Leadership Academy you will find yourself in education paradise, a little treasure that allows 128 high school students to enjoy the best education of Cambodia. Throughout the past half year Open Development Cambodia could contribute to this project that supports young talents from economically disadvantaged families from across the country with its training series about Geographic Information Systems. 

The foundation for this collaboration was set when a former ODC Senior Editor-Researcher visited the Liger Leadership Academy in 2017 and established a first contact between ODC and the school. Both sides saw the potential of a collaboration which could benefit students and ODC alike. In September 2017 then, the GIS training kicked off. In more than ten sessions running on every Friday afternoon at ODC’s office in Phnom Penh the students – who are between 13 and 15 years old – learned how to use ArcGIS to create their own maps. “Even more”, ODC’s mapping team member Mr. Punwath Prum elaborates, “we taught them how to contextualize the data, an important skill for their future projects and career.”

For the students’ learning progress it was essential to apply their newly gained skills in an own project during the workshop period. Hence, they conceived their own book full of maps and context information about Cambodia’s provinces. Mr. Punwath Prum was astounded by the skill level of the Liger students: “The youngsters surprised us again and again with their commitment and motivation, and I am sure that through the training we could gain some new users for ODC’s map platform.” After a book about Cambodia’s economy and the country’s wildlife, this publication will already be the third one since the foundation of the school in 2012. It is currently in the final stage, as the proud students revealed during the award of the certificates for passing the final test of the ODC training. The book will be published in 2018 and disseminated in high schools across the country so that more students can benefit from the young mappers’ work.

Mr. Thy Try is addressing the mutually beneficial connection between Liger and ODC.

During the award, ODC’s executive director Mr. Thy Try addressed the mutually beneficial connection between Liger and ODC: “We hope that this training was useful for your assignment and for your future career. But we also learned from you during the trainings. We gained a lot of experience from the training program and hope to continue and extend the ODC-Liger collaboration in the long term.” Liger country director Dominic Sharpe affirmed this hope in his brief address: “We’re happy about the resources ODC dedicated to help basing the students’ education and we look forward to growing this partnership in the future. Thank you very much to ODC!” First talks about potential future collaborations between the two partners are planned for the near future.

After the award ODC had the opportunity to talk to some of the students about the GIS training. Their statements are testaments for the great success of the whole project:

15 year old student Samnang Hor learned a lot during the training, as she states in the interview. Even though she hadn’t known anything about mapping before the training, she approached the topic with curiosity. “Maybe I should try it out”, she thought and joined the training. When she familiarized with the mapping tools, her interest in the subject was raised. After the completion of the training, she has already conceived some plans for future maps as she proudly explains: “I’m hoping to create a map with Cambodia’s tourism destinations so that foreigners and Cambodians can learn more about the country’s hidden places.”

“This project is really cool”, junior student Bunleap Sorn summarizes his experiences with the GIS training. Before the workshop, he had only known about software he had to pay for but ODC showed him how to use free software for mapping. The youngster is happy that he learned about GIS features like the cropping tool which allows him to focus on a specific province. “I can use these skills for a lot of stuff in the future”, he notes, and adds his idea for a future mapping project: “Next year, I want to create a map of the Liger School area to show people where they can find something.”

“Before this training, I never made a map because I didn’t know the software”, Molinaka Lim, a 13 year old student, explains. Now, after she successfully completed the mapping training, the situation couldn’t be more different. The Liger student has already conceived some ideas for future maps she wants to work on – of course only after her class will have finished the book about Cambodia’s geography: “My next map will be about different soil types in Cambodia. For farmers, it is important to learn about their soil so that they know what grows best.”