Youth Leadership and Community Engagement
With support from USAID through Pact’s WE Act project, Young Eco Ambassador (YEA) promotes green businesses and youth leadership in collaboration with Young Women Entrepreneurs (YWEs). They address environmental issues in the community by supporting and empowering youth to engage with local authorities through constructive dialogue.
Lida and his team members identified issues in the community and initiated a community project with seed funding and support from YEA. Lida became a team leader and facilitated meetings, organized the work, communicated with stakeholders, wrote a proposal, and implemented the project at his community. Lida and his team did a study visit to the Prey Chbar community forestry to learn about forestry. He got inspired and continued his commitment to community work. With capacity building support from WE Act through YEA, Lida successfully received a grant from the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN) to run his second project on deforestation and tree planting which was a good civic engagement initiative in the community.
“Without the YEA-Green Business Generation program, I would not have the opportunity to build my capacity and be able to lead the project, get back to my community and build good relationships with local authorities and people in my village. After the community project, I became very close with my high school principal. He has more confidence in me and encourages me to continue to lead to be a role model for other young people and help to develop the community.” Lida said. “Without the YEA-Green Business Generation program, I would not have the opportunity to build my capacity and be able to lead the project, get back to my community and build good relationships with local authorities and people in my village. After the community project, I became very close with my high school principal. He has more confidence in me and encourages me to continue to lead to be a role model for other young people and help to develop the community.” Lida said.
Chhea Lida, a 21-year-old man from Siem Reap, is a senior university student majoring in Teaching English at Panhasatra University. Lida joined the story telling event of YEA and became interested in initiating a community project. Lida joined and enjoyed training on leadership, teamwork, identification of problems and solutions, and social economics rights.
“After I left my village a few years ago, I rarely visited my hometown because I was busy with studying and working. However, after I joined the YEA program, I had the opportunity to go back to my village, and was more aware about my communities’ issues, and I built better relationships with local authorities and people in my village”. Lida said.
