Hey all!
I just went on a 2-week runaway from my dear room and Vietnam's city to go to Critical Issues Summit program ran by Rustic Pathways and GiveBackHack.
The Critical Issues Summit was an amazing experience, as we spent the first week in Cambodia, and the second in Thailand. In the 1st week, we first went to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. We went through interviewing workshops and learned about bias and how to empathize with interviewee, in prep for the interviews we will do in the Floating Village, which comes later. We went over the Empathy Map, which shows the different sides expressed from an interviewee such as what they heard, say, or feel optimistic or feel sad about. This allows us to understand the issue of water in a more nuanced level. We also had a presentation given by an NGO named Mr Nat. He really gave great insights about the situation of water in Cambodia, and the fact that the government is playing minute role in contributing to the water, sanitation & hygiene sector (WASH) of Cambodia. This gave me a heads-up, as I realized that for this issue, raising awareness to fight the government will not work, hence the solution must be directly attacking the issue.
3 days later, we departed PP to get to Siem Reap, which is another city in Cambodia, and from there we went on boat to the floating village of Prek Toal. We slept in homestay. Being in such bad conditions, and the people are in poor area in poor conditions due to the recent overfishing, and changed seasonal patterns, causing fish to not populate much in PT, I was motivated to find a solution. We spent a day interviewing the people, and talking with an NGO organization named Osmose who has 3 projects aiming to promote a better environment to PT. After PT, we went back to Siem Reap to meet with another NGO Plastic Free Cambodia. The business model of this organization was not good, because the speaker avoided the question to what is their business model. However, the NGO still gave us some little insights into the problem of plastic pollution.
Week 2 was spent on Design Thinking and the design process as we learned through 5 stages of it. I learned that a design must be for the audience, and that is essential, because there’s no worth of a product our client won’t like. We then pitched the idea of removing the water hyacinth that is currently invading the water river. I was the one who pioneered this cause. It was a little sad to see some of my friends, in our last day of Week 1 in Cambodia, overlooked my idea that the water hyacinth posed social, economical, and environmental problems. I however embraced the idea and was lucky to found another student named Sienna from Australia who also take my idea and see through it’s tremendous significance. She pitched this idea of removing the plants by using biodigesters, having researched that they can be used as biofuel to fuel the boat, the stove, and the electricity generator in the pitch session in Week 2’s 3rd day or so, and gained support sufficient to bring the idea up to the top and became an official prototype to which we found 6 other amazingly talented students to work with us. There were times when we were a little egoistic that our idea will win the big grant from GiveBackHack and Rustic Pathways—the organizers of CIS—and undermined the need for some grinding work. I was a little so myself, as I see it’s wide impact, not only in one side, but three viable sides, being that of social, economical and environmental. Our team nonetheless pulled back and kept working, as under Sienna’s ultimate 8 Ps, basically saying that poor work results from poor efforts. We presented on August 1st, and won a US$5k grant from the organization to test our idea, which we will follow up 2 weeks later with further notices from them.
I am truly grateful to have such a talented team. I can only imagine the pessimism of the villagers in Prek Toal to turn into optimism, and hope for their own livelihood and that of their children. Shoutout to everyone in my team:
Abhayjeet Sachal
Sienna O'Dea
Audrey Coleman
Marady Heang
Saw Hae
Franceska Smith
Ornella Enoise
May God Bless Cambodia 🙏🏻🇰🇭
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