Our Work
YOUTH TRAINING
At the foundation of YRDP’ s program offerings lies its youth training courses. Through participatory and cooperative learning techniques, these courses are aimed at raising awareness of specific challenges facing Cambodia, and fostering the skills necessary to address these challenges. YRDP’s training courses fall into its Young Peace Messenger, Young Social Development, or Youth and Good Family Development training categories.
One of these courses, the Personal Development (PD) course, is the core course which all YRDP students must complete before participating in any other YRDP courses and activities. The objective of this course is to help participants develop interpersonal skills, reflect on their life experiences and personal values, and define their goals.
After completion most students chose to advance to one or more of the currently available courses, which are aimed at learning and applying critical thinking skills by changing their perception and sparking new ideas pertaining to personal development, peace, justice, and equality.
Currently YRDP offers the following advanced courses for students in addition to the Personal Development course:
Young Peace Messenger Training
Active Non-Violence
This course helps participants better understand Active Non-Violence and start practicing its principles and strategies to change society.
The course focuses on meditation, experience of non-violence activists in the world and their principles, advocacy, managing fear and changing society through non-violence, non-violence communication. The students learn about Cambodian and foreign peace activists including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Students hear from community activists who use non violence.
Conflict Resolution and Management
Through this course participants strengthen their capacity to manage and resolve conflict peacefully in order to promote a culture of peace. Students learn to reflect on real conflict situations by analyzing their experiences, case studies and field practice observations and learn to apply analysis, resolution and intervention techniques. They also study ethnic identity and nationalism to further understand how those concepts interact with building a culture of peace.
The course focuses on understanding conflict, causes of conflict, conflict analysis, and approaches to conflict, conflict intervention, negotiation, mediation, and a culture of peace. The students learn how to apply their new found skills in the community.
Values within Society and Interfaith Peace Building
In this course participants gain a better understanding of human values, diversity, respect and acceptance of diverse cultures. The course aims to explore different faiths and challenge stereotypes and misconceptions as well as build openness, respect and cooperation between people.
This course focuses on the definition of values, symbols and identity of the nation, influence of, and respect of other culture, roles of religions in social development activities, human rights, peace and justice. Students examine the impact of the range of religions (Islam, Buddhism and Christianity), traditions and cultures on today’s society. They look at the advantages and disadvantages of globalization. Among other Khmer readings and case studies the students read an adaptation of Stone Soup to understand the values of respect, sharing, solidarity, resourcefulness and openness. Students reflect and build self-awareness of their own faith practices and stereotyping of others. This course strengthens youth understanding of the ways people of different faiths can cooperate for peace and identifies potential triggers for interfaith violence in Cambodia and make plans to prevent such occurrences.
Peace Building through Inter-Ethic Understanding
This training courseaims to increase students’ understanding of the causes of conflict that arise from ethnic discrimination and displaced nationalistic pride, in order to strengthen peaceful living in a multi-cultural society. The activities take place over 3 days : 2 days of workshops at the YRDP office and a 1 day field visit to a community which has inter-ethnic issues, to develop greater understanding about the link between theoretical ideas and practical ways to decrease inter-ethnic conflict.
Critical Analysis Training on Khmer Rouge History
In this training YRDP provides youth the opportunity to better understand and learn about the root causes of this regime ; how they came to power, the system of Khmer Rouge Regime leadership and management ; the policies of promoting people to be team leaders ; why they killed the people ; the effect or impact of the Khmer Rouge Regime on the people who lived under their control and on the next generation; and the reasons why the Duch verdict announcement is seen by many as an injustice to v ictims. These workshops include training, film viewing, field visit to the Toul Sleng genocide museum, killing fields and Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) – also called the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
Young Social Development Activist Training
Democracy and the Cambodian Government System
This course helps increase youths’ ability in implementing and monitoring democracy and human rights application process in Cambodia in order to promote a full democratic society.
This course focuses on the meaning of democracy, principles of democracy, the Cambodian constitution, rule of law, democratic problem solving, basic human rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democratic society, good governance, culture of democracy, how to lobby politicians, role of civil society in strengthening democracy, role of youth in democracy, the roles of the three branches of power, reflection on the implementation of democracy in Cambodia and other countries.
Community Organizing and Sustainable Development
Through this course participants gain better understanding main concepts of community organizing and sustainable development and then they take responsibility and their imitative for working towards sustainable community development.
This course focuses on main dimensions of sustainable development (SD), who can develop regulations to create world view, the effect of world view to sustainable development, transforming positive world view to sustainable development, what kind of society that promote sustainable development, relationship between globalization and localization to SD, the effects of the global environment crisis on development, effective community organizing. Community organizing concept, strategy to work with community, the effect of developing community through insider and outsider, role of community and outsider.
Leadership, Good Governance, and Social Accountability
This course aims to build understanding effective leadership and empower young people to fully participate in community/social development and playing role as active agents of building good relationship between local authority and villagers by promoting public consensus and local ownership of issues.
This course focuses on fundamental of good leaders, the difference between leader and manager, leadership type, team building, decision making, effective meeting, elements of good governance, concept of social accountability, fundamental of social accountability and good governance, social accountability tool, roles of citizens in social accountability,
Youth and Good Family Development Training
Love and Marriage
In this course participants learn more about the values of love, respect and faithfulness in order to create a healthy family and contribute towards the development of happiness, harmony and peace in the family and society.
The focus is on roles and responsibilities in relationships, psychology, marriage, loyalty, reproductive systems, birth spacing and an overview family law, women’s rights and the impact of HIV/AIDS. This course explores the different kinds of relationships in an extended family as well as the primary one of husband and wife. The students explore the value of loyalty and faithfulness in a marriage and how that promotes peace within the family.
How to Get and Create a Job
This course aims to empower participants to seek and create employment opportunities through a better understanding of the Cambodian job market and strengthening of their job seeking, interviewing and small enterprise development skills.
It focuses on how to strengthen personal capacity, analyze challenges relating to searching for a job, vocational ethics, becoming an entrepreneur, adopting the ethics of a responsible employee and empowering oneself to contribute to the transformation of Cambodia.
Advanced Personal Development
The course gives student a chance in seeking for personal transparency with personal empowering and society to be a part of personal development and society with morality and sustainable.
This course focus on Action Styles, Science and Standard Thinking, Information Analysis, Golden Rule, Stress Management, Key Elements of Globalization, ASEAN Understanding and Personal Development, Global Development Impact on Personal Development, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Time Management, Calendar Using Method, Positive Mental Attitude, how to speak in the public, 7 habits of highly effective teens, Youth’s Model.
Following both the Basic and Specific Courses, students participate in practical field work and reflection activities. YRDP accompanies the students to rural provinces where they help villagers tackle the issues that threaten their survival and ability to improve their living conditions. Trainers witness students apply their lessons learned during the courses into responsible, thoughtful, practical, and mature thoughts, communication and action.
At the same time, some participants are strongly inspired by the contents of training course and by seeing real situation in communities. Consequently they undertake their own social development initiatives such as conducting discussions with neighbors, street children, orphanages, students, friends, and community people on variety of issues including peace building, solving domestic violence, advocacy, good governance monitoring, family planning, birth spacing, and primary health care. Annually, YRDP provides these training courses to over 700 students. Female participation in the youth training courses generally averages above 40%.
