Royal University of Phnom Penh

Department of Environmental Science

Internship Report
Environmental Program, NGO Forum on
Cambodia

By

Chhay kimheak

Project supported by USEPAM_DANIDA

Phnom Penh
October 2007

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 Acknowledgement

We are four year students of Department of Environmental Science, Royal

University of Phnom Penh. This report is made based on what we got during working as
Interns at NGO Forum on Cambodia (NGOF). We already described the duties required
us to complete and also what we had learned from there. We want to remind all readers
that this report is probably impossible to do if there have no Internship Program
established by Mr. Seak Sophat, deputy director of Department of Environmental Science
(DSE). We really want to say thank to him very much for assisting us to work at NGOF.
We also want to thank to Dr. Net Barom, vice rector of Science Faculty who spent his
time on involving in Internship program process. We want to take this opportunity to say
thank to Ms. Va Dany, director of DES for encouraging us to join the program.

In addition, we also want to say thank to Mr. Chhit Sam Ath, excusive director of
NGOF for accepting us to work at his organization. We highly appreciated Mr. Sam
chanthy, Environmental awareness Officer for his attention. His advices are very useful
during our performance at NGOF.

Finally, we would like to thank to Program supporters, USEPAM-DANIDA for spending

their value resource on creating this Internship Program which is very helpful for all
students in DES.

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 1. Introduction
As studying in the Environmental Department of the Royal university of Phnom Penh
and, and all year three students (2006-2007) were funded by USEPAM-DANIDA to learn
working experience from the non government organization. I was sent to the Mekong
Basin Community Right Project of the Environment Program in NGO-Forum on
Cambodia to study on “Participation in Advocacy efforts Against Yali Hydropower Dam
” case study in Carchorn Commune Ta Veng District in Rattanakiri.

2. Objective
Working in the NGO-forum on Cambodia on the topic “Participation in Advocacy
efforts Against Yali Hydropower Dam”, I have two main objectives:

o Learning from the topic

-To be aware of responsibility of stakeholders on advocacy efforts against Yali
Dam at Local national and regional level
- To be aware of perspective of local community in advocacy efforts against Yali
Hydropower dam
o Learning working skill experiences
-Organizing workshop
-General communication skill
- Improving report writing skill
-Learning Research Methodology

3. Roles and Responsibilities

• Researched on “Participation in Advocacy efforts Against Yali
Hydropower Dam”
- Developed the outline of the topic I had set
- Participated in River Coalition in Cambodia monthly meeting (monthly meeting)
- Made checklists to get information from Local community and Local project
officers
- Discussed with Supervisors (teacher and project officers)
-searched for relevant documents
- collected information from Local community and project officers in Rattanakiri
province
-developing report
• Assisted in Environment Program
- Edited Mekong documents
-Translated Pesticide documents
-assisted organizing study tour to Rattanakiri
-wrote a case study on “Influence of Yaklom Eco-tourism” during study tour
- facilitated Environment Training on “Climate Change” in Kompong Tom

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 4. Outputs
• Learning from the topic “Participation in Advocacy efforts Against Yali
Hydropower Dam”
- Yali Hydropower dam affect villagers along Sesan river; they didn’t
recognize the root cause the issue at first and thought about the spiritual causes
- Then they have been trained to identify the factuality and established into
communities to do advocacy on dam construction and compensation by 3SPN
organization
- Local communities are to monitor and observe the changing of natural resources
and social economic in their sites which affected from dam operation
- They are about to raise their own voices in Advocacy tasks at nation and
regional

• Learning working skills

- Developed researching experience
- Familiarized in organizing workshop
- Developed communication skill
- Improved report writing skill
- Improved facilitating skill
- Group working and network working enhancing

5. Challenging
o Shortage of primary information due to making mistake in time management and
respondents selection during field work
o Supervisor didn’t have enough time to advise on topic have been doing

6. Lesson Learned
• There are two different kinds of community (Livelihood improving
community and Advocacy community)
• Working with Network is a very challenge job when they’re not clear about
their role and responsibilities
• To get good information should identify well about the respondents
• Dependency on primary information alone is not an effective report, should
be included or matched with secondary information

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 7. Conclusion and Recommendation
All the major lessons learn getting from NGOF is mostly satisfied. On the other
hand, we are happy to know the hot issues that happened in Cambodian Society through
working in the program and hope those experiences are going to be useful in future.
I really have the same idea to other interns who want to encourage the department
to hold this program every year.

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