the Time paste About Khmer Rough and more things.....!

Difficult to learn and unlearn

Many Cambodians who passed the Khmer Rouge regime are living with post trauma effects, and thus they have limited ability to learn as they face difficulties to unlearn (unlearn means to let go the old unhelpful things and take one new helpful things). Many other Cambodians can learn and get good knowledge and skills, but often they find difficult to implement their learning into actions to make a change. Some people know and understand about specific subject, but they are reluctant to change as they feel unsafe to do so.
On the other hand, it was observed that Cambodian people have different perspectives towards learning approaches, and often Cambodian learners like an approach, which make them more easy to follow and comfortable to join, e.g. a leaning process, in which learners have less (or no) responsibility than facilitator. It is an expectation of the “best answer” or a “right or wrong answer” for any specific question or issue. It is also expected that facilitator need to give answer right away when a question is asked.
Learning about how to learn
When this term is introduced, a lot of Cambodian people seem not taking it as serious. They might think that only child need to learn about how to learn, but for them they feel they to learn. However, there are many challenges in this context as many people struggle to be an effectively learners, in which they need to learn a range of “learning skills”, but often they overlook these skills and jump to learn the subject or professional skills. As result, no deep learning can be taken place. In fact, learning skills such as (critical) thinking skills, mind mapping, questioning, reading skills etc. are prerequisites for effective professional learning.
Case example: Not many Cambodians have a reading culture
In an organization, a project, which was designed based on a research book in Cambodia, was managed by an expatriate for more than 3 years. A new Cambodian manager was appointed to manage that project with the existing project staff, and the expatriate's role was transferred to be the advisor.
The new Manager asked one of the project staff whether she has read the research book, the answer was "not really". How many days you need to read that book? Asked the manager. She replied: about five days. The manager said: I can give you more five days, total of 10 days, so that you have sufficient time to read, OK?
Ten day later: Were you able to completely read the book? Asked the Manager. The answer is "yes, I have done it", replied the project staff. So, please let me know what the book s about, and what have you learned from that book? Answer: I don't know!
Learning needs
My observation was that many Cambodians are still struggle in identifying their own learning needs. Some of them said that their supervisors should know about their learning needs and send them to an appropriate training course. It is a Cambodian pattern that people not like to express their weaknesses as they might feel losing face by doing so. This creates a barrier for identifying learning needs. Some people understand learning need as similar to a “request” for a training or workshop.
During training, workshop or a learning process, participants used to view their role as “customer”, and view the facilitator as “supplier”. Based on this perspective, it creates an expectation of participants for the facilitator to respond to what the “customer” wants. Throughout my experience, the customer used to say: we want the facilitator to give us more handouts, good refreshment and lunch, good training room, good per-diem and travel allowance etc. Are all of these the important participants’ needs (for me they are strategies rather than needs)? Some participants said: we pay so much money, so the facilitator should tell us any answer we need instead of asking us to think and work out ourselves.
Assessing the success

It is also one important challenge, in which an external consultant is hired by an NGO director to evaluate effectives of the organization and impact of its program. Often, we observed that the consultant tries to give a diplomatic and acceptable feedback to the NGO. The purpose of doing this is not to make the NGO unhappy about the feedback, and at the same time having completed an assigned task. One of m development colleague said: if the consultant very critical and honest feedback, the NGO director might feel not happy about this, and as result the consultant will not be hired anymore in the future.
Practical experience vs. skills to transfer skills
For many years while I was performing my management role, I constantly heard from my colleagues as trainers who were given feedback by participants during management training " ...that management trainers were not in the position to give concrete examples regarding management matters as they lack of practical experience (common participants' feedback)."
This feedback is very valid, i.e. learning facilitators can help the learners to lean best when they can give real/concrete examples related to the subject discussed, to deepen learners’ understanding and to make good connection between the theory and practice. However, in the reality, many trainers do not have practical working experience before they train other people.
In contradiction to that, a person, who has many practical working experience does not automatically mean that s/he can facilitate others to do or to learn doing a certain thing. Often, a person is very skillful in performing a job, but as s/he need to help other people to learn to do the same job, s/he often struggle as s/he is lack of “skills to transfer skills” to other people to do the job instead of doing the job for them.
This example occurred many times with the Advisor position in an organization, in which the Technical Advisors (whether a Cambodian or expatriate) supposed to help and facilitate Cambodian staff to be capable to do the job on their own. Due to the lack of transferring skills (or maybe other reasons), the Advisors just keeping doing the job themselves and Cambodian staff remain dependent from the Advisors. In summary, if you want to facilitate other people to do a job, it should be best when you have two kinds of skills, practical experience and skills regarding to the subject (i.e. you can do the work), and the transferring skills (the way or process that you help other people to learn doing the work).
Difficulties in changing behaviors
Many Cambodian development practitioners have learned a lot of knowledge and skills, but they have no willingness to change themselves, so they prefer to keep status quo and doing the same thing or doing things in the same (old) ways. All development practitioners called themselves or were called as “change agents”, but often they struggle in changing themselves.
You can never change society if you have not changed yourself.
Nissan main dealer Nelson Mandela
Lack of individual good role modeling

My observation was that many Cambodians either not willing to be a role modeler (for a variety of reasons) or they wait to see others people (especially the powerful people) act as role modeler so that they will follow. It is also my observation for those (low status) people who try to act as good role modeler were facing either the challenges from the society pressure or the risks by powerful people. However, when we are doing development work, we would like to see change, and the question is “where to start the change”? One obvious and effective solution is to start from ourselves.

In Cambodia, it is rare and hard to see good honest role modeling from individual person, both in NGO and public sector, but instead many “bad” models exist throughout the country such as violence, dictatorship, rudeness etc. From time to time, I heart many NGO staff said: my boss is so autocratic or even a small thing like “I saw many people do not stop driving by red traffic light”. My questions to development practitioners are: if you see your boss is autocratic, will you copy this and do it the same to other people below you, or will you do differently? When you see people do not stop by red traffic light, will you follow those people or you stop?

A subject that is very link to the role modeling is “walking the talk”. Most people (both Cambodians and expatriates) find so difficult in walking their talk. Walking the talk means doing yourself first before asking other to do or practice what you preach. In the development work, we often educate people to change, but we often struggle to change ourselves. For example NGO directors used to say “Government leaders stayed too long in the power, and only the same persons (same face) are leading the country, so there is no big positive change”, but at the same time many NGO directors themselves stayed also very long (some time for their life) in the director’s position in their organization. Other example was that some development workers try to promote development vales for participation and empowerment to their target groups while autocratic leadership style is being used in their own organization. Walk the talk also need to be happened at organizational level.

When all of these remain the challenges in Cambodia’s development sector, then the effectiveness of Cambodia’s development is really questioned.

Expatriate technical advisors

My understanding was that, generally, in Cambodia, expatriate technical advisors are hired to provide technical support to Cambodians to build their capacity so that after a period of times, the Cambodian will be able to manage the project / organization themselves. In the reality, Cambodians view expatriates as their boss, and advices often were seen as “instructions” that they feel they need to implement. From the Cambodian point of view, often we assume that expatriates have the capacity to do every thing.

An Asian wise man said:

When a person is given a fish, s/he can make soup for once only,

but if a person is tough to catch fish, s/he will have fish to eat forever.

In the reality, the technical advisors, who come to work in Cambodia’s development sector, have faced many challenges. First is the communication barrier (language) as not many Cambodians can speak good English and expatriates cannot speak Khmer either. Second is the challenge with socio-cultural environment as Cambodians have different history and culture that different from theirs and often beyond the capacity of expatriates to understand. This challenge also includes of the context how to make their “western” useful and applicable to the Cambodian context (many expatriates were struggle with this). Third is the question of expatriate capacity in transferring their skills to Cambodians as many expatriates have the practical working experience, but not necessarily have the “skills to transfer skills”. As conclusion, expatriates also need support for themselves in order to provide support the Cambodians. Furthermore, some organizations were not clear about the expatriate roles in their organizations or some times they do clarify the roles, but there are no clear strategies to achieve those roles.

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Challenges
at

organizational level

There are many good news from Cambodia development sector. Generally, NGOs were recognized and trusted by the Communities and Cambodian people. Many people indicated that NGOs have save their life from being violent or exploit by powerful people. While the public services in Cambodia are poor managed and accessed by the poor, NGOs play an important role in filling that gaps. Even though, the impact can be more significant if NGOs have improved their internal development and management, and their programs. These challenges include:
Lack of leaning and adaptation

A number of NGOs have learned many things, but they find difficult to turn their learning into actions to improve their practice. Often, there were no systematic and regular reflections to review their current activities and strategies to draw lessons learned to improve future practice. Some organizations just do what the donors want rather than having real commitment to be an effective and improved organization in order to bring positive changes to the Cambodia’s development.

Furthermore, many western theories are good and they should have been applied in Cambodia successfully. Even though the question lies on how these theories are transferred or implemented in Cambodia based on its context? It should be more effective if they are adapted to the circumstances in Cambodia rather than putting them as the whole “original” into Cambodian practice. It would also helpful when they can be translated into Khmer and make available for Cambodians.
Lack of good internal practice

While a number of NGOs are trying to demonstrate good practice with their internal management, it was observed that a number of NGOs established and functioned in a model like a family business, in which the husband is the Director, wife as finance manager, and son works as project officer. Many NGO directors consider the organization as “own property”, or their own “Kingdom” and they used to mention “the organization of Mr. A, the organization of Mrs. B etc.” rather than view it as an institution of a shared ownership to serve public interests. Nepotism is a big issue, which prevents NGOs from doing good practice. Based on the record of the Ministry of Interior, currently, there are around 2000 NGOs registered in Cambodia, but the numbers of active NGOs are unknown.

Not walking the talk

There is always problematic in Cambodia’s development regarding “walking the talk”. There are so many talks, but seems little practice “walks”. In the NGO context, not walking the talk means an NGO, who supposed to work against a certain social issue, often felt difficult to solve this issue within their organization or their leaderships. For examples:

A number of NGOs educate people to use participatory approaches and democracy while their own leadership style or decision-making are very autocratic or top-down. Others are working to combat violence while much (non-physical) violence exists within their own organizations.

Organizations want to see changes in their targeted beneficiaries, but often they struggle to make changes within their own internal functioning and management.

Organizational staff members do not internalize the in-use development values, and therefore, they act differently from what they believe (behaviors at the work place and at home are different).

Government officials even more struggle with walking the talk, especially when they are working in a “controlled” system, which make them difficult to have space and freedom to implement what they have learned or wanted to do.
Cambodians and expatriates working together
As mentioned at individual level, there are challenges for expatriates in working in Cambodia. In many organizations in Cambodia, expatriates are needed for a number of reasons, and it is going to need expatriates working in Cambodia’s development sector in the future. Expatriates bring many varieties into the development work to build multi-cultural organizations. They brought many experiences (especially the western concepts) into Cambodia, and Cambodians have gained a lot of benefits from that. However, the questions are about their roles within an organization and their relationships to the Cambodian colleagues.


With regard to the roles of expatriates in an organization, it was often stated that expatriates should build the Cambodian capacity to do the work, but after a decade, many work, which supposed to be done by Cambodian, is still undertaken by expatriates, and many Cambodians are still very much depending on expatriate support. Was the role not clear to expatriates and their Cambodian colleagues? Were expatriates not in the position to transfer skills and expertise to Cambodians (as lack of skills to transfer the skills), or there was an issue of Cambodian ability to learn? Was there a lack of expatriates’ willingness and commitment to “teach Cambodian to get fish” or it was a weak commitment of Cambodian colleagues to change and take their own responsibilities on Cambodia’s development? Was a concrete mechanism in place to ensure effective skills transfer?







A case example:



In a small project of an NGO, an expatriate was hired as counterpart to a female Cambodian, to provide a series of reflection workshops to Cambodian development practitioners.



Even their job title is “counterpart” to each other; it was observed that in every workshop, expatriate colleague took the lead in all stages such as preparation, design, delivery and post course documentation. A detail observation was that during the workshop, expatriate counterpart spoke, explained and facilitated most of the steps, and the Cambodian colleague assisted to hold and collect flipcharts, helped with some translations, some warm up games, and arranged logistics for the workshop etc. This kind of working relationship repeated for every workshop.



After 2 years, expatriate left the project, and that Cambodian colleague was not able to continue running it. She was not strong enough to continue implementing the project without other expatriate support. Her analytical skills were not well developed.



Who’s fault? Was the working relationship helpful for that Cambodian facilitator? Was that an effective way for learning (by just observing)? What could be done better?




A further question is about the relationships between expatriates and Cambodians in an organization. I have a positive view of having expatriates working with Cambodians, but my observation was that, not in every circumstance, the relationships remain very “hierarchical” between the two them. Often, the relationship looks seem a modern “patronage-client”, in which the expatriates are patrons and the Cambodians are clients. Here again, it is questioned whether the expatriates have studied this kind of relationship in the old Cambodia society, and want to practice it, or it is from the Cambodian colleagues, who prefer to d so as they perceive expatriate power. How does it say and link to development values such as empowerment, dependency, sustainability etc.?




Localization

This topic is very link to the working relationships between expatriates and Cambodians. Localization often refers to an international organization, which has expatriate leader(s), and wants to transfer leadership to Cambodians. It can mean that expatriate management positions are replaced by Cambodians and/or the highest level position (director, country representative) is transferred to Cambodian.



Localization initiatives often come from donors, who wish to effectively and efficiently use of local resources to achieve more positive changes. Localization is a sensitive issue, and it was always tension when discussing it. Fears and anxiety feelings were shown. In a bad word, localization also means “kicking expatriate out of the job”, and we can understand why people have tension about it. For Cambodians, who wish to depend on expatriates, localization brings a lot of fears for them as they believe on expatriates’ ability to raise funds rather than Cambodians’.



There are some successful examples of localization, in which organizations have a clear commitment to the localization process, and Cambodians were given the opportunity to learn practicing the highest position in an organization during a stable circumstance. On the other hand, it as often observed that some expatriate leaders led the organization for a very long period (e.g. more than 10 years) and they always have good reasons to explain doors why their organization cannot be localized. The organizational life continues with expatriate leadership until its decay phase (e.g. internal management crisis, donors stop funding etc.), then a localization plan was thought.



A Cambodian, who is appointed to replace the expatriate Director in that particular circumstance, will face many challenges and crisis handed over by former expatriate director. In case, s/he fails, then blames will certainly come to her/him for “not strong enough” to lead.


Fighting against symptoms rather than root causes

Many development interventions focused on symptoms rather than the root causes of the problem. Many development practitioners are still struggling (or lack of professional ability) in identifying the root causes of the problems, and therefore their interventions are not effective. It was observed, for instance, that some NGOs working to help women to promote their rights, often only work with women as their target groups (the victims), and not have serious considered involving men, who often are root causes of the problem.



Often, I heard many people (including some development agencies) saying that “the cause of a certain issue is the poverty”, e.g. “Many Cambodian youths are abusing drugs and domestic violence, and poverty is the cause for that…”.



In my view, this analysis is somewhat useless for Cambodians. How can we find a constructive solution if we view poverty as a cause? Many Cambodians will say “so, we can’t do anything about it as we are poor”. The perception of viewing poverty as a cause rather than effect really makes Cambodians (including some development practitioners) hopeless and struggle to find ways forward. So, view poverty is an effect rather than a cause!!!



Moreover, as the Cambodian people believe in Karma, often, the powerful people used to manipulate that “fate and destiny” cause poverty. Many development workers do not believe like this, but as many poor Cambodians were stuck with their difficult life for such a long period, they have to live with it.


Challenging the emergency needs

There are so many cases and situations that Cambodian people requires immediate assistances such as foods, medical relief etc., and this lead to a situation where people perceive development as a “given”. When this perception will be end? We don’t know!



Many development practitioners want to promote sustainable development by encouraging Cambodian poor to depend on themselves. When they go to the villages, they see many people are so poor and need immediate helps, so the practitioners struggle to implement their development strategy while seeing people cannot meet their daily basis needs.



Power and empowerment

In Cambodia, power is a significant issue in the development. When this concept is introduced, people often understand in terms of “getting the power” or “power over” rather than “power within”. In Cambodian. A mean to get power is often the use of violence and physical force. So, it sounds fearful when hearing the word power.



The word “empowerment” is very common used in the current Cambodian development sector. This word is translated into Khmer as “to give power”, and often is very confused in its application. Its meaning seems to persuade someone to fight against other one, or to behave higher status than someone else. Another word “building self-confidence” is more meaningful or appropriate than to be translated “giving or providing power”.

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Challenges

at

society level




Historical, socio-cultural forces

When talking about Cambodia’s development, we cannot afford not to talk and to be aware of Cambodian historical context, and socio-cultural factors that undermine it. After Angkor glory, Cambodia has gone through several periods of extreme negative changes, which led to develop many unhelpful patterns such as lack of confidence, lack of trust, fearful behaviors, expatriate dependency, short-terms thinking etc. In other countries, they might face similar consequences when they experienced such events. For development practitioners, failure to recognize those aspects will result to non-effective development interventions.



Unforgivable trauma

The trauma left by the Khmer Rouge blocks the Cambodians to move forward constructively. This perception is not new to anyone in the development sector. In my view, if the development practitioners intend to make an effort to move Cambodian development five steps forward (for example), the trauma would hold it back four steps or even more (writer emphasis). The fearful experience makes Cambodians difficult to unlearn, and this is another root cause that hinders positive change.





Unhelpful patterns from Cambodian society

Many development practitioners try to do many good development work including changing their own behaviors and practice. They can do this very good within their organization, but when they go back home to the community where they are living, they were very much influenced by the socio-cultural forces, which are more powerful than what they can do. This leads them to have different beliefs and actions between their organization context and in their community. For example, within the NGO work, we promote “equitable relationships between people”, but when we come home, we see that we are living in a society, which is dominated by hierarchical status. So, the question is “what should we follow?” Should we try to challenge all people around our house and some times exclude ourselves from the community or should we copy this pattern from community and take it back to our organization? Often, their espoused values in the Cambodian society and in their organization are different.



Corruption is a big issue in Cambodia, which always brings bad Cambodian “face” to the world. People can’t believe that while the Cambodian history indicates that the Khmer people used to be honest and have integrity in the society, but there are such many corruptions exist in the current Cambodian society. The corruption seems being developed to be a constant practice or a “pattern” in Cambodia as it happens everywhere in this society, government, private sector, and also NGOs.







In the development work, I (the author) heard people saying “corruption is a very negative thing that we must avoid”, but in the society I heard people say “the reason that I go to work [in the government institution] because I can make extra money [corruption]”, otherwise I cannot survive and be rich.






It was observed that the Cambodian anti-corruption law has been in draft since 1995, and 12 years later (2007), it still not yet adopted. NGO workers mentioned about lack of political will that causes no law.



Nowadays, some corrupt people say “corruption is a fuel” to facilitate development, meaning that without doing corruption, development faces difficulties or cannot take place (I heard this from a radio forum discussion about corruption. From my point of view, this perceptive is somewhat stupid, as people want to stay with status quo rather than fighting against corruption.



Corruption becomes a chronic Cambodian social disease (writer’s emphasis) that cannot be healed easily as the real good models towards non-corruptive behaviors from the top leaders not exist. It was observed that person, who sees and has strong desire to talk and speak up about corruption, often faced many challenges and some times in danger.





What is opposition party?

We observed that, like other countries, Cambodian has a ruling party and an opposition. My observation from western countries indicated that the opposition party plays a crucial role to ensure the democratization in a country, and in some of those countries, an opposition party has changed their role to become a ruling party when it got majority votes from the election.



In Cambodia, the word “opposition party” is translated into Khmer as “against party”, and it sounds like a party, who it is always working against the government or it sounds in Khmer like “enemy or barrier” to the government. The lack of deep understanding of the role of each party resulting to an unresolved tensions between their supporters, and often also lead to political discrimination.


The great escape

Many Cambodians indicated that they suffer a lot from their history, and as results, they feel stressful of their life. Day by day, we can see many Cambodians, including intelligent people, are trying to immigrate to other countries. The most preferred country is USA, followed by some European countries. Some people told me that they were tired for their life, some other said “I want to seek future for my children” etc. Some Cambodians lose their ethical moral (e.g. some very young girls marriage old Americans) as they try to find a legal way to immigrate. It tends to be the “great escape without end”… The question is, when many qualified people escape to another countries, how can Cambodia has good human resources for its development? This great escape is however not unique for Cambodia comparing to other countries in the