Live and Learn Cambodia is the Linking and Learning Facilitator for Voice in Cambodia. Voice Linking and Learning refers to the total activities, processes and trajectories realised to boost collaboration, connectedness, sharing, listening, learning, innovation, and innovation of new knowledge among grantees. It aims to produce evidence, learnings, and innovative solutions to catalyse transformative change to promote diversity and inclusion.  LLC works in straight collaboration and coordination with Voice Cambodia as well as the Voice global coordination team. We believe that as a facilitator in Linking and Learning, we are able to support grantees to reach their full potential through collaboration and working together as a community. So far, Linking & Learning has provided space for grantees to learn from one another and network, however, it has not encouraged significant collaboration between organisations on contextual issues that are the realities of civil societies in Cambodia. We encourage collaboration so that each grantee understands the other and gains experience in working on various issues. Live and Learn Cambodia supports Voice grantees in developing their Linking and Learning as well as amplify the Linking and Learning to national, regional, and international levels. They promote the participation of members of the Voice rightsholder groups and facilitate building communities of practice around issues and challenges that concern them.  They develop a platform that supports inclusive collaboration, including community members in geographically remote areas. They organise events and meetings, develop thought-provoking pieces, and produce creative works to amplify the grantees’ voices at the local, regional, and national levels. We encourage collaboration so that each grantee understands the other and gains experience in working on various issues.

Introduction 

Live & Learn Cambodia is the Linking and Learning Facilitator for Voice in Cambodia. Voice Linking and Learning refers to the total activities, processes, and trajectories realized to boost collaboration, connection, sharing, listening, learning, innovation, and innovation of new knowledge among grantees. It aims to produce evidence, learnings, and innovative solutions to catalyze transformative change to promote diversity and inclusion.  We believe that as facilitators of Linking and Learning, we can help grantees reach their full potential through collaboration and working together as a community.  

Project implementation 

The key deliverables supporting grantees’ linking and learning activities, organizing and developing the Linking and Learning (L&L) activities platform, developing the capacity strengthening, promoting innovatively and producing the publication, participating in the voice community of practice (CoP), amplification of all the activities, and monitoring and evaluation to support all the activities. 

Impact and transformation 

As a result of responding to the deliverables, Linking & Learning has facilitated and provided space for grantees to learn from one another through various linking and Learning activities on coaching for mental health, digital & social media campaigns, youth rights at work, enabling a safe space for the Linking and Learning community, thematic workshop on LGBTQI people & social inclusiveness, and women and leadership. Capacity strengthening training to grantee partners on resource mobilization and fundraising, successful story & report writing resulting in 10 successful stories produced by the grantee partners and published on the Voice global website, and project cycle management. Participation in the voice community of practices by gathering grantee partners for a workshop on looking forward to the inclusion community of practice and community of stakeholder mapping with six (6) communities of practice established and formed. The other two times of consultation workshops with the grantee partners to move forward in the community of practice in Cambodia. The concept of video case studies, supporting grantee partners to produce innovative knowledge and products through video editing training. The training was introduced to promote innovation and produce publications. Organized and developed linking and learning activities and a platform, Linking and Learning, facilitating the Annual Linking and Learning 2023, Peer-to-Peer Action Research, Global Learning-L&L, E-Learning Forum, and Annual Linking and Learning 2021.Supporting the activity grantee partner activities and amplifying their activities in different forms of amplification, national and global, with the output of the event article with the public on the global website.  

Practicing the linking and learning of exploring, testing, and reflection. Linking and Learning organized another consultation workshop to support other communities of practice two times. The approach of learning by doing walk-the-talk to let the CoP team members work in the group discussion and write their project initiative step-by-step in the proposal template and presentation to the whole group under the support and guided by the workshop facilitator, Linking and Learning team, and voice team on feedback.  

The grantee partners have produced a total of 10 videos, through the concept of video case studies, supporting grantee partners to produce innovative knowledge and products through video editing training has been introduced to promote innovation and produce publications with one grantee one video. 

One grantee and one video produced by the grantee partners with 10 videos collected, and amply it during the linking and learning annual reflection.  

Through the successful story and report writing, six successful stories of change were produced and amply through the Voice Global website and the box link:  

Linking and Learning supports the grantee event with the output of event articles and amply on the Voice global website: https://voice.global/grantees/connecting-voices-in-cambodia-2/#latest 

Linking and Learning document and publication in Voice global website: https://voice.global/grantees/connecting-voices-in-cambodia-2/#latest 

Voice Cambodia Linking and Learning Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/linkinglearningcambodia?mibextid=LQQJ4d. With Facebook reaching out to 6.5K people.  

Lessons learned 

Through the Linking and Learning platform and space in connecting the grantee partners to learn, share, and capacity enhancement to build up the community of practice in Voice Cambodia. The trust has been built and earned from the grantee partners, which led to the opportunity to move the community of practice in Cambodia with challenges faced along the way of staff/team turnover, the complexity of the project, small team, and the gap of the project not connected with grantee partners and the new team comes with the need to be earning the trust from the grantee partners that required time, patient, understanding, flexibility, and adaptability to accommodate to the various need and diversity group and background.  

Time passed, and trust was earned. A Community of Practice Women reformed again and implemented the activities in 2023 after capacity enhancement of project cycle management by using the approach of learning by doing after one year of implementing linking and learning activities. The community of practice women implemented two activities on the project idea Women’s Voice Toward Inclusive to reduce the discrimination against the five rightsholders of CoP women. There are two activities implemented: activity 1: Community Solidarity for Women Empowerment and Activity 2: Linking & Learning among rightsholder groups in Rattanakiri province (Learning and Linking Events on Freedom, Equality, and Freedom from Discrimination). In 2024, after the two activities are finished, the CoP-women would like to scale up and expand by requesting two more activities to advocate and promote sign language with five rightsholder groups in the Community in Rattanakiri province and Activity 2: Organize amplify campaign to celebrate the International Women’s Day to eliminate discrimination.  

Through the consultation workshop, there are five (6) communities of practice with their project ideas: The project ideas and CoP name are (1) CoP of indigenous people (IP) has developed the project ideas on amplifying the voice of the Kui indigenous community through an opera theatrical performance to encourage community youth to speak their native Kui language proudly. (2) CoP of LGBTQI has come up with the project ideas for unfolding the LGBTIQ+ journey: embracing diversity, equality, and inclusion with three objectives: to document the real-life experience of LGBTIQ+ couples, to celebrate the Month of Love (February) by documenting Family and their LGBTIQ+ children through acceptance stories and to raise awareness about the LGBTIQ situation and rights to the public and to see how LGBTIQ couples challenge while there’s no legal marriage for LGBTIQ couples in Cambodia. (3) CoP of elderly & people with disability with an initiative to promote community voice through community theatrical performance of people with disabilities (PwD) and elderly. It aimed to raise awareness of the problems and needs of people with disabilities and the elderly through theatrical performances. (3) CoP of elderly & people with disability with an initiative to promote community voice through community theatrical performance of people with disabilities (PwD) and elderly. It aimed to raise awareness of the problems and needs of people with disabilities and the elderly through theatrical performances. (5) CoP-ID of people with disability (PwD) on conducting the disability identity card to identify the barriers to accessing the disability card for PWDs, finding concrete solutions with main stakeholders, and advocating to government and local authorities. (6) CoP of Art & Mental Health and sign language on the project ideas on Paint Your Emotion to promote the well-being of the deaf community and people living with hearing impairment through the art of painting.   

Along the way of the facilitation, the documentation and learning materials were documents the linking and learning Journey in booklets with artwork and summary in illustration, which you may check out in the link, which is all available online as well through the Voice global website.