Help Youth in Cambodia Keep Their Learning Center!

Hello PEPY friends and community,

First, we want to thank you again for helping make the Learning Center Program possible this year! Without your generosity, we would not have had the funding in place to support our students and give them the opportunity to participate in career and skill development projects and initiatives.

The past couple of months has been an incredibly exciting time for the Learning Center.

• The team was thrilled to see the return of the Cambodia Ireland Exchange Program! 2 PEPY staff and 2 former students visited Ireland for 3 weeks in April! While in Ireland, they went to schools and organizations to share Cambodia's culture with the Irish community as well as share updates about PEPY and our work. This is the first exchange since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreaks so everyone was thrilled that we were able to finally make it happen! We are looking forward to Irish teachers coming to Siem Reap in July to conclude the 2022 exchange and share their culture and lessons with our Learning Center students.  
• Another major event this quarter was the Public Speaking Contest. All 60 students were trained in public speaking and were given the option to compete. 48 students signed up and after the qualifier, the top 20 were selected from video submissions. From there, the PEPY team put together a panel to select the top 5 candidates! This event was an amazing opportunity for students to build their confidence and students shared that they would love PEPY to hold similar events in the future.   
• The Youth Empowerment Project organized 3 workshops with outside trainers such as First Aid training on March 3rd-4th, Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) training on March 10-11th, and Financial Literacy training on April 5-6th. We believe that having First Aid skills enables students to save lives through delivering primary support when needed and SRH helped students to be aware of their physical growth so that they can prepare themselves prior to changes, physically and mentally. We conducted another training on Financial Literacy to help students improve their spending habits so that they are able to manage their budget effectively as they prepare to be financially independent.
• Lastly, all 60 youths at the Learning Center were divided into 10 groups for their education or environmental Youth Civic Engagement Project Implementation. So far, our youth have been trained to develop skills in Public Speaking, Conducting Presentations and Meetings (both virtual and in-person), and Proposal Writing. They have been working as a group to identify collective issues, causes and effects, and solutions. Youth will receive training in Project Cycle Management, Advocacy Skills, Activity and Budget Planning, and Fundraising. During the next step, students will be conducting a need assessment in their target areas in order to collect the issues and find the root cause.

We hope you enjoyed hearing from our team! All of these awesome updates were made possible because of you and we appreciate you and your commitment to youth in our community. 

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to us at any time! 

Sincerely, 

Kathryn McDaniel | PEPY's Partnerships and Development Manager 

kathryn@pepyempoweringyouth.org

Links:

• Facebook Live video during our trip to Ireland!