Survivor Challenges at Rabbit Island
I am a student who studied at AZIZA SCHOOL. I would like to tell you about the best action, which was happened bellow.
On September 07,2007, team leaders group of AZIZA SCHOOL and the 9 students who got the number one in leadership class that provided by Mr. Sokchea SAING, and I am one of the student among them. On the other hand, there were three teachers and other four foreigners participated in this trip to Kep city for two days and a half.

After we arrived Kep city, my friends and I knew that this is the place we must to showing our ability of leadership through the six games that managed by Mr. Drew McDowell for each game. These games will choose one of them to be the real leader. We stayed in a guesthouse for one day.

On September 08,2007, I and all my friends carried out those games which called “Survivor Challenge”. we divided into two groups that one group has 5 members led by Mr. Put Set and another was my group which has 4 members led by Mr. Kim Sreang. All games always challenge each other that connected to the external / outside.

The first game is buying food which provided each group use $ 12 per group to buy food without higher or lower than $ 12. The second game is cooking food, which provided each group to cook on the island call “Rabbit Island”. We determine on the beauty of food, taste, and time. The third game is camping which provided each group camp and find the equipments by themselves. The camp must be strong and beautiful that can stay one day. The forth game is read ivy the newspapers which is the talent game that recommend them to remember less or more by the short duration of times. The fifth game is performing the story that good in meaning, take short times, and make the audience attractive. The sixth game is showing the talent. This game needs to pick up one representative in each group to speak.

Through playing these games, it provided me for a special feeling that I cannot say. Moreover, it provided me with a lot of useful things such as.
-To make and manage the clear plan before doing something.
-To use the money in a limited way and share it for others problems.
-To be brave in communication with others people whom we don’t know them.
-To white in-group in order to help each other without lagy in duties and without sharing heavy or unheavy jobs each other.
- To share ideas and experiences each other without thinking the rank of people and know the strength and the weakness of our self.
- To know how the people live and they’re living standard in that area.
- To know the goods and guesthouse prices especially know how to live with foreigners such as: the conditions, foods, and habits.

On the other hand, there are many difficulties for me such as.
-It was very difficult to cook and to find the name of the food to do (our self) without helping from others, and to share the money was very difficult because we need to separate it for foods and at there writhing was very expensive. So, we asked many stores to find the ingredients what we wanted to lovy.
-Camping was very difficult for me because I am a female and never done it. I and my friends need to find the equipments and used our talent to communicate with the people who lived at there in order to borrow some equipment from them even though we never known each other, and we found some woods in the forest which full of sharp thorns, In addition, we borrowed the kitchen from the people to cook. We were afraid their mind because we never known each other before.
-Performing the story was difficult because I never played, did not know how to use our senses, and chose the story, which has the complete meaning and took short time. So, we must be brave in order to perform this story. On the other hand, traveling across the island by boat make my feeling nervous when we arrived at the centre of the sea. Moreover, the boat nearly sank because of the big undulating water, and I wish to arrive on the island soon.

Even though all difficulties that I described above completely difficult, but the more difficulties you are, the more we can decide to kick someone out from the group when we lost the competition. It seems the sentiment could not sideline someone from this games because we had joined the same difficulties, laugh, and work hard together.
So, when we kick someone out, it’s really affected to the sentiment and feeling when we ask, “ Who we get rid of in this game?”
Although I lost in this game, I think it’s really great for me, which I could do the hard working that I never done it before. I would take all of the experiences that I have been learnt to share with people around me especially use it in my future life.

By Khuon Lina, a member of team leader.

Sokchea SAING conducted Leadership courses at Rudi Boa Center
This article describes the activities which gives recommendations to the leadership students at Boueng Kak Lake, who graduated on August 20, 2007
At Rudi Boa Center I presented two courses. The first course, “Leadership Development Skill Classes”, was held between 12th March, 2007 and 27th May, 2007 and the second course, “Leadership in Action”, was held between 18th June, 2007 and 8th August, 2007.

I planned to teach a course called Job Seeking Strategy, which is a training program of Bridges Across Borders, in order to develop the leader through youth life in Cambodia. We know that everything has a starting point, the future will happen because of what started. A good start will bring a good future but in contrast, it could end up quite differently. Country director David Pred stated at a ceremony “In my life I had two choices: First a good way and the second a bad way, but I selected a good way for my life”. From this statement, I began to question why it was he selected the good way when he was young. There are a lot of Khmer youth who do not have choice, planning, or goals in their life. And they especially do not know seem to understand their own talent and skills.

In leadership class, we started with some questions about knowing yourself and who you are: Who am I? Where am I from? Where should I go? What should I do when I get there? Who is the leader? What should I do in order to be a good leader? What characteristics should a leader have? What kinds of conditions should I have? How do I train to become a strong leader?
There are points that we gave them to practice in this case study. For the first hour, all students joined to make the rules and regulations for the class. One student came in front of the white board to write and the other students called out their suggestions. They challenged each other with what they were saying, and the writer had difficulty following their speech. All their ideas were really good such as: come to study early, tolerance, and to ask each other questions.

Presentation:

Students must answer three questions, which are related to the goal of life, life management, and their lead of life. I always give the students homework and the next day two or three students present in front of the class. After they finished, their classmate could ask questions and give them some feedback. I saw nearly all the students were shy, complicated, and forgot everything. Some students practiced at home in order to do well. Miss Bopha desired for several days to present. She sweated and trembled, but she tried to be brave to answer the difficult questions from her classmates.
Mr. Net Kosal was a freshman student at the National Institute of Business and he gave a good presentation. This was because he managed it well and he explained his plan for life, goals for the future, and his daily execution. Through the presentation, nearly all of the students developed a clear plan that before they had never thought about.


Group Discussion:

Each lesson always had a group discussion where we divided everybody into smaller groups, to make the discussion easier. Each group had a representative to present the group ideas, and then other groups asked questions. Even though some of the students never discuss their ideas in the big group, I saw that they showed their ideas and could answer the questions very excellent. Sometimes the marvelous answers and questions came from their mouths.

Mr. Sambath told me that his parents did not concern about his study and sometimes he felt hopeless by himself. When the class breaks, he always took his story to discuss with me, and he promised that he will try to study until he got the number one student in the class. Sometimes Mr. Sambath studied without any time to eat food, and was a silent person who lacked confidence in the class. Now, Sambath is a sociable person with good communication skills and has the confidence to present in front of the white board and class.

Test:

When we finished the course, all the students had to do a test to get the certification. The students think a certificate is very important because they see it as a successful sign of study as well as being useful for job seeking. There were three main questions, and an extra one - which connected the feeling the students experienced after they had finished the course. One table had only two people with a different test. It was a wonderful sight after they finished this course. A new group of leaders for the community has now emerged who are brave to say what is true, and to do the right thing without being afraid and finding things difficult. Mr. Sambath told me that now he knows how to manage the goal of his life and to face the problems.
This is the letter of one my students, written on August 12, 2007 during graduated leadership class by the full meaning below:

Mss Meng Ratana

The advantage that I get from leadership class is improving my character. Before, I looked down on my friend because he believed different religion from me. One day, my friend invited me to join his religious ceremony. In the ceremony, I said badly to him that you wasted my time to come here; I didn’t believe another religion beside mine. Since that, we have never talked to each other.

After I study leadership class, I realize that I would not say those words to my friend because each religion leads people to be good. The words that I said to him were wrong. This class is very good for me and the country, I can participate in society. In the future, I will be a good leader of a company or my family, but I have never thought that before this class. In brief, I can get a lot of advantage from this class.

Life is Struggle
My name is Sok Eang, I study at Build Bright University in Phnom Penh now. I also study English and Leadership for two courses: Leadership in action and Management Leadership at AZIZA SCHOOL with a wonder, what is leadership? How can we become a good leader?

During I was taking leadership class at AZIZA SCHOOL for a while, I became to know and understand of life, how to live, how to struggle in life, leader’s operating and future and future goals very clearly. Before my life seems like living in a dark place because I didn’t take a leadership class. I don’t have goal and plan for the life, beside live one day and think one day, for I lost my parents whom loves me, now I am an orphan with three of my brothers and sisters . After I lived with one of my brothers who already married and my sister lives with her friend. She is a seamstress. The life living with sister in law is not easy, it hard to get a long well and have a good communication. Sometimes the tear is falling down from my face because of the unexpected or nasty words from her, so I sometimes eat food and sleep outside with my friends’ house. At that time my life wasn’t bright and no hope to continue to live in the future. In that situation, I lost my brave, didn’t think of the future life, this is the reason that makes me almost failed in discorragement to live and study is worse, wasted a lot of times in the passed years. But there are many things have been changed now, after I study leadership class, the lessons made me understand clearly about life, management , the life is going better. I started to think that life is struggle; work hard and patience so will complete the goals of life in the future. The real future is waiting who believe in his/her selves and brave, if we want to reach our goals.

My struggle was happened, when I caught new thing in life and social through learning and supporting from AZIZA SCHOOL and all friends those who worked with me. I started to work in school and outside of school. Now I can earn money by myself for helping of my study and some expenses for my brother.

Last of all, I would like to give a deep thanks to Drew and teacher, Sokchea SAING that taught me and friends at AZIZA SCHOOL and wish you happiness and successful in life.


By Sok Eang