NEW PLACE, NEW EXPERIENCE, AND NEW PLAN

Written by Sawn Sokha Chivi, Young Leadership Program Participant from Cambodia 

I, as well as, many others believe that corruption is a huge barrier for the development of social and economic in every country around the globe. I have thought that if I want to combat the corruption, I shall be started from now and be opened to learn and work together to eradicate it.

My strong commitment against the corruption has been developed since the day I started participating in Young Leadership Programmed (YLP), which was provided by TI Cambodia in Siem Reap province in early 2018. Later on, I went on applying for the Transparency Fellowship in Malaysia. I never thought that I could be one of the ten Transparency Fellows who were selected for this programme.

Transparency Fellowship is an initiative of Transparency International Cambodia under Citizen and Youth Empowerment Programme. This fellowship programme allows ten Cambodian youth to have a study tour for two weeks in various institutions of Malaysia, which are working on anti-corruption and good governance related initiatives.

My two weeks in Malaysia got me eyes opening. Since it is my first time traveling abroad, I have got many new experiences including their ways of living, Malaysian food, Malaysian culture and city environment. Besides experiencing a modern city like Kuala Lumpur, we also had an opportunity to visit some institutions that work on good governance and anti-corruption. Thus we got chance to learn how their government and civil society organisations work on combating corruption.

From this wonderful studying, I have learned a lot from them on how they engage people to participate in fighting against corruption through the creativity and campaigns engagement. In addition, I have also learned how they designed and embedded messages to educate their people in order to maintain peace and safe environment; together with the message that help raising awareness on corruption issue in their country.