Sophoan and Vichet have organized the annual Seminar of the KCY-AA on 20 May 2012. There were many guest speakers and participants were presenting there. The theme for this year is about “Education, Health and Career of the Youth”. But while we were unfortunate to get response from the speakers who are specializing on Health and Career, we were fortunate to have many speakers who were great at Education for youth especially in the field of Conflict Resolution, Initiative for Change, Youths at the Front Line and Open Society for Youths etc.

As the result, we can summarize the seminar into three categories:

– What is the actual independence for a country for youth? – The answer is depending on the individual youth who must pursue their own independence first before exploring independence of others and the nation.

– What is the actual drive of power in the developing countries? – The answer is referring to three Khmer words “ខ្លៅ=Klao, ឃ្លាន=Klien and ខ្លាច=Klach” or “អវិជ្ជា=no education, អត់អាហារ=hunger and ភ័យខ្លាច=fear”. The speakers concluded that in developing countries, leaders have defused these three elements to prolong their power. Among those is to frighten their citizens (objects) to carry out the politics of threatening and control, for instance in Sudan and Cambodia.

– Last but not least, what is the meaning of multiculturalism? – The answer gave us example on the historical foe between two races: Cambodian & Vietnamese. The example on the conversation between Cambodian youth and Vietnamese youth shed us light on how to explore both ends on racist slur – the answer is to open conversation and interaction.

Please, watch this video for more educational speech on this year Seminar.

Thank you very much for your kind participation and wisdom sharing.

Organizers!