ICT in Education/Change Projects/2014C Cambodia ICT Capacity Building

Change agent: Lyda NGIN

Email: lydangin@gmail.com

Name of the organization: The NGO Forum on Cambodia

Title of the change project: Using ICT Tools to accelerate working progress and improve the advocacy work

Country: Cambodia

Started date: March 2015

Status (finished/ongoing): Ongoing

Last Updated on: February 6, 2015

1. Background

Cambodia is one of the oldest countries in the world. It has experienced many regimes, wars, yet the sense of culture, both new and old, is persistent. Located in Southeast Asia and bordered by three neighbors; Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, this developing county is currently having approximately 15 million population over-all. About 80% of the population are living in the rural areas and depend on the agriculture and farming.[1]

Over the last two decades, migration to the city of Phnom Penh, the country's capital city of Cambodia has been rapidly increasing. Cambodians have seen their capital grow by leaps and bounds every year. While Cambodia remains predominantly a rural country, enormous numbers of late have been streaming into Phnom Penh from rural areas in all corners of the country.[2] This cumulative number of people to the city together with development projects in the telecommunication sector have boosted the number of mobile and internet users in the city and gradually into the rural region of Cambodia.

By end of 2013, the number of mobile subscribers in Cambodia topped 20 million, surpassing the country’s population by about 5 million. Internet users also jumped. Cambodian Internet users—both landline and mobile—increased from 2.7 million to 3.8 million, a 42.7 percent jump.[3] This data shows that the ability of people to access information, as well as being able to use this technology, has greatly increased.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia

[2] http://countryoffice.unfpa.org/cambodia/?publications=5857 - 2012

[3] The Cambodia Daily, March 27, 2014 “by Ben Sokhean”

2. Challenges

Even though the number of the people accessing information and using technology is growing, the issue of using them in a proper way remains a challenge. For example, Facebook, currently, is the most popular social network which is being used by almost all walks of life in Cambodia. Rather than other sites, it is widely considered to be the search engine that most people rely on for information. What is going to happen if the Facebook is immediately down? Which social network can the citizens use and rely on?

Additionally, the education system focuses on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is still limited to the people due to a lack of human resources, teaching materials and educations management, as well as ineffective policy. As a result, most of the ICT student graduates seem not very well prepared upon their graduation.

At the meantime, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Government Organizations (NGOS), who are working really hard on various aspects such as environment, land and human rights to improve the situations, seem lacking of effective communications strategy and using technology to include in their operation as well. By observing, they haven’t yet realized that ICT has played a very important role in supporting their projects and activities by accelerating their working speed through effective working tools, productivity and the effectiveness of their working management. ICT can also be used to reduce the digital divide between Cambodia and the neighbouring countries. As a part of the NGO Forum and skilled at media and communications, it is very significant to be able to distribute and share ICT knowledge to the networks and members, so they will be able to be dependent on themselves in their future efforts related to communications. Additionally, this contribution will also be an important part of the advance of the development work in Cambodia in order to reduce poverty conditions, promote democracy and human rights.

3. Objectives

The aim of this project proposal is to enable the NGO Forums’ networks/members and the NGO Forum employees to have chances to improve their capability and knowledge on ICT and be able to proceed and to share it effectually in their long-term development work.

4. Target Group and Number of Participants

NGO Forum’s networks/members and NGO Forum staff, explicitly, the communications persons, leaders and project coordinators will be the target group for this training session. The provided training causes will not only focus on the lecture, but it is also an opportunity for all participants to exchange and share knowledge between each other as well as with the trainers.

The trainings will be held discretely between NGO Forum’s networks/members and NGO Forum team, where there are around 15 to 20 participants at a time.

5. The Scope of the project

This capability development project intends to share the lesson learned on ICT to those who are in need. Hence, the main itinerary of the training course will be enclosed on the ICT by beginning from the basic up to the advance level.

6. Activities and Time Frame

The schedule for the training sessions:

NGO Forum staff:

First session                          July 6, 2015

Second session                     August 7, 2015

NGO Forum networks/members

First session                          August 28, 2015

Second session                     September 30, 2015

The training course will be designed along the lines of the ICT training course provided by the Sweden Embassy. Training approaches include lectures, practicing and online exercises.

Since the training is going to begin at the basic level, two training courses will be provided to the same target groups in order to extend their ICT knowledge to over basic level and to follow up with their practicing afterward. The identical plan will be complied with the NGO Forum colleagues.

7. Expected or final result

After receiving the training, the trainees are expected to be able to:

1.   Understand and gain more knowledge and ideas about the significance of ICT

2.   Increase the ability to complete the work in an interconnected world as a workforce skilled in ICT is available for all the colleagues in a knowledge-based society and increase working productivities

3.   Be able to practice commendably and share it to the other networks/members

8. Budget

Budget estimation for four training courses include allowance for participants based in province and logistic is about USD 5,000.

9. The Project organization

The NGO Forum colleagues from different units - finance, administration, programs, and communications - will be supporting with the training session including fundraising, logistic arrangement, candidate recruitment, and training facilitating. The third party, ICT specialist, will probably be invited to the session to enhance the training contents.