Four years ago, Ministry of Education hosted the first STEM festival in Cambodia and yet, the festival remained to happen every year; I never missed a year to exhibit or participate at the event because I want to see as many projects as possible. During the first festival in 2015, I was exhibiting my Tech Support Exploration with my mates and the crowds rumored around our table amazed what we did. This year I was honored to present my self-balancing robot I engineered during my after-school activity. Beside exhibiting my projects, I observed others’ as well and I discovered that there were new faces from public schools, around my age, presenting their STEM projects. I have seen countless projects from organizations, companies and international schools over the last couple year, but I have amused to see robots, Arduino projects, insect spray from lemongrass, even games that were done by these high school students. I remembered two years ago, I gave a lecture of using Scratch software to the Secretary of State of Ministry of Education purposely to implement this coding software in public school, and then surprisingly, I saw some of the students were using them for making games and displayed in the festival! This made me realizes that  I made a “change” for Cambodia in STEM field.

I love STEM subjects, but when magnifying it closely, I am marrying with coding and robotics. I took online courses on coding when I was 13 then I realized I love it – it inspired me to pursue coding. To me, coding is a magic that can spell phones or computers to do whatever we want. Last year, my team started developing a PayPal-like website called Liger Digital Currency for our school. The entire site took my team a lot of work for designing, planning and, programming. We couldn’t be proud enough when this site officially launched last October. This application is being used by Liger students and staffs every week for catering and maintenance around the campus. This is the greatest achievement my team and I honored for our school.

I could now proudly call myself a web developer!

Technology brought humanity into a revolution. There is significant growth in many sectors such as education, construction, medical and more. It certain that countries’ economy has boost exponentially when technology evolved in our society.

I have seen a new mobile application trending in Cambodia: PassApp. It helps people saving money when traveling via a Tuk Tuk, a motor with a cart, as well as Tuk Tuk drivers would more customers. This is the innovation that Cambodia needs, the innovation that beneficial to people.

Steve Jobs, a founder of Apple Company quoted that, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” Related to the quote, I believe that Cambodia would be a place where there are many innovations, sustainability and I am committing to make this a  reality.

  Robotics is another factor to my passion. With this passion, I joined a VEX robotics competition at Thailand in February. I love robots. By participating in this competition, I could advance my mechanic, programming as well teamwork skills. The experience I had, I shared with students who went to STEM festival and encourage them to be like me.

  How could robots change the world? It could change the world in a devastating way, but we see the benefits it gives to people. People sent a rover robot to inhabitant Mars, so we don’t spare astronauts’ life. We sent robots to explore the ocean so people couldn’t be crush by enormous pressure. However, robots would likely take over people’s job by its automation technology. Almost every labor force would replace with robots, but the productivity, performance, reliability would be advanced and cost of each product would be reduced.

  A part of expanding knowledge about STEM subjects, I also gave away. An example was in Bambujaya Exploration where I wrote addons about Khmer, Math and Science subjects of the 3rd-grade book for a new private school, called Bambujaya. Bambujaya’s mission is to make sure students are more engaged by implementing these STEM activities since Cambodia’s government curriculum is a French teaching style and there is lack innovation for the students.

During my volunteering at Khmer Sight Foundation’s mission, I was fainted to see poor conditions of the community we went, to see many families couldn’t afford a sunglass for themselves and to see people struggle to see their grandchildren, children and their world. I helped doctors to interpret English to Khmer and encouraged patients to get an eye surgery. After the surgery completed, surgeons now could see far and clear. One patient comment that “I am really happy and I hope I could help my family to earn money, especially I could climb palm trees and make sugar. I have never thought my eye could come back, but the doctor provided me a new eye.” This triggered me a feeling that I have contributed to change these people’s’ lives and I suppose that they never forget this, because the mission made them feel unbelievable happy just like what Maya Angelou quotes that, “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”