Kinyei

For the past two months or so, Kinyei has been developing a social enterprise to help bring in funding for Kinyei's projects. The enterprise, called SoksaBike (a play on the traditional Khmer greeting of 'Soksabai' which roughly translates to 'Are you happy and healthy?' or, more prosaically, 'How are you?') is an educational bicycle tour of the beautiful Battambang countryside.

We've whipped up a questionnaire aimed at collecting volunteer feedback for volunteer programmes and host organizations. Volunteer placements can be hard to get right; despite the obvious fact that volunteers want to contribute and projects need support, actually organizing a mutually fruitful engagement is frequently very difficult in an environment where projects are often under-administered, communication fraught with cultural differences, and work dependent on the vicissitudes of donor funding.

Since the Shine Human Rights Festival was held in Naga Springs park on the riverside of Battambang Town on December 10th, it appears that the location is gaining traction as a public celebration space for International days of recognition.... On February 14th, a collective of young Khmers from all over the province came together to put on a concert to commemorate Valentine's Day and address social problems among their peers. Now, SALT organisation and Coconut Water Foundation will collaborate to hold a festival commemorating International Women's Day next Monday, March 8th. They'll be moving in hot on the heels of another locally organized concert which is being set up right now.

Valentine’s Day is a recent addition to the Cambodian Calendar which has attracted some dark undertones; a recent study done on Khmer youth discovered that 66% of males planned to have intercourse with their partners on Valentine’s day, regardless of consent. This supports the observation of NGO workers that Valentine’s Day is a black spot in the year for incidence of gang rape and related violence.

Back in October, some folks got together in Phnom Penh for the city's second ever Barcamp. We went along and shot some footage of the event which our good friend Martin Potter over at SCY kindly put together in the form of a rocking little clip of our experiences there:

Buddhism For Development, one of Cambodia's largest and oldest continually operating local NGOs, has agreed to partner with Kinyei to promote and run the Shout human rights day event here in Battambang. BFD brings with it strong ties to the local community and will be an essential component to making Shout a huge event for Battambang. We're excited.