Almost 16 years after the Paris Peace Agreement, Cambodia is still suffering from the effects of two decades of Khmer Rouge dictatorship, genocide and civil war. While parts of the economy are making considerable progress – with an official growth rate of over 13 percent last year – more than 30 per cent of the population are living under the line of extreme poverty.

The gap of poverty is even severe for rural community while the development projects focus more for urban area. The impact of poverty makes the accessibility of rural kids to education is difficult while they are needed for family income generation. There are studies shows that school dropouts are contributed from the labor needs for household’s economic production. At the mean time, the educational system has not been equipped with enough modern methodologies (refer to Student-Center Approach) and social trend’s awareness.

Due to these facts, a voluntary team—Youth Network for Change (YNC) — comprising 7 members have worked together with the purpose to alleviate these matters through its community event and camping where the team accompany with other youths coming from different academic and work institutions explore journey in order distribute study materials and create a space for dialogues and information/knowledge sharing to the kids at grassroots level. Between that, we also aim to expand the youth networks to experiment the rural livelihood, so that it will inspire them to determine their ability and contribution to social development. The subsequent impacts are that we expect to help envision the kids toward their future and have a nation-wide youth network that cares its society.