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Why an internship for a Cambodian student?

Meera Leilani Z.
Meera Leilani Z. wrote on 07-06-2011

First of all, I want to thank another donor for his 20€ for the bicycle displays. He didn't have a credit card or paypal and transferred the money directly. He is a former ConCERT volunteer.

Secondly, I want to explain why we want to host an intern at the ConCERT office and where the idea came from.

As reported in the ConCERT January newsletter, we had a group of tourism students from Battambang in and gave them a presentation about the tourism industry in Siem Reap focussing on tourism-related problems for the environment and local communities. Many of them had never heard about the most basic concepts and figures in this context, neither had they any relevant experience in this field - and they were about to graduate.

Higher education in Cambodia is still bad. Cambodian degrees are internationally not recognized due to corruption within the universities and the extremely poor level of teaching. There is not much research going on and neither is international exchange.

It is possible to graduate as a Master of Business Administration without ever having been inside an office.

We want to do our part in improving higher education and giving local people some useful skills. We want to use the chance and train someone in responsible tourism and make him aware of current issues and possible approaches and solutions.

We are interested in interns from Battambang (2,5h away) who would need their expenses for food and accommodation (at least partly) covered ($80). Also we would the intern to get as many impressions of both sides of the tourism industry in Siem Reap, which will take staff time and office and financial resources (from equipping him with name cards to transportation for an NGO visit).

We estimate the total cost of hosting an intern from Battambang for 3 months to be around 300€.