University Education for Young Women in Cambodia

This year Lotus Outreach has replaced GATEways, the tertiary scholarship award program we developed to serve the Girls’ Access To Education (GATE) Program, with a program that not only offers assistance to ensure that the girls finish tertiary studies and/or training and further education programs that lead to certain employment, but will also provide seminars and mentoring with emphasis on leadership, professional development and self-development, health, social as well as gender issues that will prepare these young women to be agents of social change. We are calling it the ‘CAmbodian Tertiary Education And Leadership, YouthS Training program’, (CATALYST).

The CATALYST program visits girls at their high schools to provide timely employment and further education orientation for high school girls under GATE scholarships supported by Lotus Outreach at Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. Preparing them at this level will ensure they understand what subjects they should be studying to match their further education and training choices. This preparation will also deliver the skills needed to apply to universities and training institutes. Often these students are eligible to receive partial/full scholarships.

Back in March 2016, Lotus Outreach Cambodia (LOCAM) identified a group of volunteers called Career Advising Services (CAS), based in Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). CAS was founded in 2011 with the objective to provide guidance and resources to Cambodian high school and RUPP students to achieve their career aspirations relevant to their academic interests. After meeting with the group to find out more about their activities, LOCAM connected CAS with our CATALYST Project (known as GATEways back then) to set up a workshop for our high school scholarship recipients on the 5^th of June 2016 to provide them an orientation on career counseling. There were 16 scholarship recipients who attended the training which was held in Phnom Penh.

The training lasted for half a day and provided the participants with various kinds of information including university information, experience sharing from current university students, scholarship information, and playing game to reflect decision making based on three main factors—abilities, opportunities and interests.

The team also guided students through a personality test, which helped them to understand more about themselves and enabled them to get a better idea of what types of job matches with their personality. The hopes in this exercise was that the students would choose the right university and major that would caters to their strengths and interests. 

Based on the result of the test, each student may fall into one of the 6 groups of job: realistic jobs, conventional jobs, investigative jobs, artistic jobs, social jobs, and entrepreneurial jobs. The workshop also enabled students to see whether how they should prepare themselves for the career they aspire for (what subjects at high school they need to be strong at in order to get a place at the right university afterward). For example, if their test result shows that they are best for realistic jobs—engineer, architect, mechanic, IT specialist, electrician, electronic specialist—they should be good at these subjects: mathematics, physics, computer, English, French, and chemistry.

Having seen the importance and benefits of this workshop, the CATALYST project invited the CAS team to provide another workshop to our high school scholarship recipients in Siem Reap Province on March 5^th, 2017 at Dom Dek High School where 22 scholarship recipients attended the workshop. Students whose test results fell in the same group of jobs gathered together to further discuss if the types of job suggested by the test result are of their interests. After that, one representative from each group came to share with the rest how she feels about the result, whether it fits with their own interests and how they will prepare herself for that job. 

Students found this workshop very interesting and beneficial. This is what Sophea,12^th grade, feels about the workshop, “I’m very happy and excited about this workshop because I got to know many things such as my personal interests, opportunities, and my ability to realize my dream as an accountant. I got to understand much better than before. I will do my best so that I can become an accountant as my dream.” 

Similarly, Sothearoth expresses “I have learned a lot from the workshop about making plan while in year 12 in order to pass the national board exam. I also learned how to get scholarship as well as how to focus on certain subjects that will be related with my future career. I think the workshop is very important because we, students, are young so we don’t know much how to study to prepare for future career, so the workshop does assist us to start thinking about it.”

Besides organizing the above mentioned workshops, CATALYST also cooperated with Passerelles numériques Cambodia (PNC) and GATE Project to arrange for 13 high school scholarship recipients and 5 non-scholarship recipients in Phnom Penh and 22 high school scholarship recipients in Siem Reap to attend an information session at PNC on February 5^th and March 6^th, respectively, on how to apply for a scholarship to study 2-year IT training (Web Programing OR System and Network Administration) with accommodation provided and 99% job guarantee after graduation.

Following the information session in both areas, 13 students in Phnom Penh and 16 students in Siem Reap applied to this opportunity with PNC. The CATALYST also assisted 5 students from Banteay Meanchey Province to apply for IT training with PNC, of which 4 of them were formerly supported by Lotus Outreach until end of 2015 and one of them is non-scholarship student.     

CATALYST also collaborated with PNC to enrolled 10 students in Phnom Penh (5 CATALYST recipients, 2 GATE PP recipients and 3 relatives of CATALYST recipients) to do computer training for free at PNC on every Sunday from 1pm to 4pm for 3 months starting from March 12, 2017. The training is provided by senior students of PNC’s Solidarity Group with the support of PNC’s Education Department. The course covers Word, Excel, Power Point, and Internet/Email. The knowledge from this training is very beneficial for their studies at the university and their future careers.

Thank you to all of the donors that have supported these students along their education paths. We are so excited about the transition from GATEways to CATALYST and feel that the changes will enhance the students experiences even more and cater to an even more prosperous future! Stay tuned for more CATALYST updates.