Support the futures of 3,000+ Youth in Cambodia

Hello PEPY friends and community, 

Cambodia has officially reopened and our PEPY scholars and team are breathing a sigh of relief to see youth returning to schools and tourism reinvigorating the Siem Reap community. Now that the town is more lively, scholars are finding work opportunities in schools and in local businesses and our unemployment rate has shrunk to just 11%! In the coming months, we predict that our scholars will achieve an employment rate above 90%, the highest it has been since the first COVID outbreaks. 

As we begin to feel more optimistic in 2022, we wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for supporting our scholars and our team, in a time when crises after crises were and continue to impact communities around the world. Without you, our scholars would have had to drop out of school and move back into their hometowns, as they would have been unable to afford their living expenses, while their family members were facing food insecurity. By funding PEPY and our Scholarship for Higher Education project, students and their families were provided food and extra support, enabling our scholars to continue their studies and their job searches within the city. If the scholars were forced to give up on their dreams and drop out, they would likely be doing construction work or farming to try to help their families and very few of them would have returned to school. Thank you, for helping us end the cycle of poverty in our communities! 

Quick Updates: 

• LinkedIn Training: In February, the PEPY Communications Team provided an introductory workshop on LinkedIn to help our team become more engaged with job networking, career research, and lectures/career-building events. Our goal by the end of the session was for all PEPY team members to have a polished LinkedIn page that they use as a tool to help our students, support other NGOs, and develop themselves. We are pleased to have the entire team join and our Communications Team will be following up by providing one on one sessions for every staff member. Find us and friend us next time you are on LinkedIn! 
• Team4Tech 2nd Round: We are so thrilled to receive another $15,000 from Team4Tech to support our team and participants' IT training needs. We plan to use the funds to give our team members better quality computers, to cover workshops and courses for our staff, purchase more computers for our IT library, and put some money toward our Public Community Lab and Coworking Space in the YISI office. 
• New Volunteers: 8 Learning Center graduates received SE Asia Foundation scholarships this quarter! This fund will cover their studies and the purchase of a computer for them to perform well in school. We are so proud of them for their hard work and determination to complete their higher education degrees. As SE Asia Foundation scholars, they must complete 2000 hours of community service with their sponsoring organization (which would be PEPY in this case). Right now, the scholars are divided into different departments including Operations and HR, Admin, Learning Center Program, and YISI Program. We think it is wonderful that they will be able to intern with us and increase their professional skills. We thank SE Asia Foundation for providing us and our Learning Center graduates with this incredible opportunity!

If you want to follow the activities and updates from PEPY more closely, we would encourage you to sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter! We also have quarterly reports for each program that we would be happy to send you that you can request by emailing us.

Sincerely,

Kathryn, PEPY's Partnerships and Development Manager | kathryn@pepyempoweringyouth.org

Links:

• Welcoming our 8 New Volunteers
• Learning Center Classes back in Action!
• Dream Class Enrollment and Highlights