Lessons Learned from Cambodia Development

Lessons Learned

from Cambodia Development

Lessons learned at:

Lessons learned at individual level

In Cambodian, when talking about development, we often want to see positive change. During the last decade of practice, it confirmed us that there were many positive physical changes and changes in professional skills and knowledge of Cambodian development practitioners, but it still difficult to see significant changes in people attitudes toward learning and practicing new things or doing things in a new way. The reason for no change is often not caused by knowledge gap.

We can conclude that the post trauma from Khmer Rouge has negative influence on leaning ability of Cambodian people. Many work still need to be patiently done to heal the trauma so that Cambodians can unlearn and move forward constructively.

We learned that in the current Cambodian development, there was little emphasis on learning how to learn as many people assume that they can automatically learn. Furthermore, in the Cambodian context, learners seem reluctant to take responsibility as an active learner. Individual sustainability not comes from the ability to copy and past, but mostly from the learning ability as an effective learner.

There are different motivations between learning need and request, so we can only provide effective capacity intervention when we clarify them. If we want to achieve changes as leaning outcomes, we always face tensions with Cambodian learners’ expectations as they still prefer traditional (comfortable) way for learning process, in which facilitators need to respond to what they want.

It confirmed me that in Cambodia, boss does not like to learn from the subordinate. However, being an effective need to consider learning from all dimensions, i.e. learning from boss, from peer colleagues, and from subordinates. A boss, who fails to listen and learn from his/her subordinates, will lose a big part of the learning opportunities.

There is really a difference between doing a job and help others to be able matter to do the job. A person, who has many practical experiences, does not automatically mean that s/he can facilitate other to learn effectively. In opposite to that, a facilitator cannot help the learners to learn effectively when s/he has no practical experience. Practical experience and facilitation skills need to be together so that capacity building interventions can be effective.

A proverb said, “You cannot teach old dog with new tricks”, but in return some old dogs can teach you some tricks and experience. In case the old dog is your boss, the tricks and experience s/he teaches you can be useful or painful. Please be careful in using the word “dog” in Cambodian context as it mean “stupid”, and make people angry.

We learned that for the Cambodia’s development, we cannot avoid not working with expatriates. In the working relationship, Cambodians should not assume that expatriates know everything. We can exchange our experience and learn from each others. The hierarchical relationship between expatriates and Cambodians as well as the Cambodian perspective of viewing expatriate advisors as bosses were not helpful for long-term Cambodia’s development.

I learned that the Cambodians can never expect to be as equal as expatriates because in the reality we never. Furthermore, we also learned that Cambodia’s development might still remain ineffective when the expatriates are still doing the work for the Cambodians instead of facilitating them to do the work for their country. Many expatriates are still speaking n behalf of Cambodians.

We learned that, as an impact from the post trauma, many Cambodians are not daring to try new things, so they wait to see other people doing things in a risk-free context, so that they can follow to try. However, it was difficult to good individual role modeler in development as people were facing risk when doing so.

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Lessons learned

organizational level

It confirmed us that we can improve our practice by taking time to make a serious and systematic reflection, through which we can draw lessons learned. We have to turn our lessons learned into actions; otherwise we will repeat the mistakes again. In organizational leaning, development concepts from elsewhere should be adapted to the Cambodian context so that they can be relevant and applicable.

It is natural that organizations are lack of some internal good practice, but if the issue become serious (such as nepotism, big management and leadership issues…), then the impact made with the beneficiaries is limited.

The differences between me and my boss

When I take a long time to finish, I am slow,

When my boss takes a long time, she is thorough

When I don't do it, I am lazy,

When my boss does not do it, she is busy,

When I do something without being told, I am trying to be smart,

When my boss does the same, she takes the initiative,

When I please my boss, I am apple polishing,

When my boss pleases her boss, she is cooperating,

When I make a mistake, I' am an idiot.

When my boss makes a mistake, she's only human.

When I am out of the office, I am wandering around.

When my boss is out of the office, she's on business.

When I am on a day off sick, I am always sick.

When my boss is a day off sick, she must be very ill.

When I apply for leave, I must be going for an interview.

Source: Unknown

We leaned that NGOs are institute to facilitate positive change, but they often struggle to change within themselves. Many NGO directors (both Cambodian and expatriate Directors) are so powerful in their organizations. They have the full “control” over the rest of the staff in their Kingdom. While some Directors tried to build capacity and encouraged their staff to develop and grow, many other Directors have less commitment to make space for their staff to grow as they felt they might lose control when their staff becomes competent and assertive.

We can conclude that in Cambodia development sector, expatriates have been working in organizations to build capacity of Cambodian staff, but in many cases, we have not achieved the outcomes as desired. Many aspects of the root causes still need to be determined.

Many Cambodians learned that the localization of an organization often takes place in the decay phase, so that Cambodian leaders do not have a chance to learn practicing the highest position during a stable organizational situation. A fear of Cambodian leader of localization is no fund.

We learned that there was different understanding towards the root causes of a problem. There were some approaches and strategies that aim to address the symptoms rather than causes. In the development work, the word “empower” sounds not helpful when it translated into Khmer.

Lessons leaned

at

Cambodian society level

It confirmed us that while the small percentage of Cambodians (especially those who live in the city) has improved their living standard significantly, we have to recognize that the majority of Cambodians remain very poor.

We learned that, in the Cambodian history, Cambodians were rare able to solve their internal conflict by themselves. Often, foreign support was needed to solve the problem, and the country remains depending on foreign aid.

We learned that many unhelpful Cambodian patterns were developed from the past Cambodian historical, social-cultural forces. These patterns such as lack of confidence, lack of trust, fearful behaviors etc. can not be easily changed. Corruption becomes a chronic Cambodian social disease that cannot be healed easily.

We learned that Cambodian development practitioners are living with two types of values, the exposed values that they are promoting in their work, and the in-used values that they practice in their everyday life in their home community.

We learned that there seem a negative image in Cambodian people’s mind when the term “opposition party” is introduced, which lead to political discrimination activities in Cambodia. The issue might come from the Khmer translation.

It confirmed us that many Cambodians seem stressful in their life, and as a solution, they try to escape to other country whatever they can. It becomes an endless escape…