On December 20th 2011 Kinyei welcomed a new friend, Jan Cornall, who is from Sydney, Australia. She came and visited Battambang and Kinyei cafe’. During her visit to Battambang, she opened two different workshops. The first one was in the afternoon which was about the creative ways of making zines, crafts from paper. The other one was about creative writing. The workshops mostly encouraged people to think and be creative by making things and making decorations. It reduces stress and is also fun to see other people’s creative ideas. We got different people attending from a different organisations who attended like GEMS International School, Children’s Future International and Kinyei members and other friends. Katie who is one of Kinyei’s Facilitators joined the Zine craft and expressed that the workshop is mostly a relaxed way, great and fun to do something creative with friends and others. She loves and enjoys finding beauty from normal things. It helps her to have more creative ideas with her project. And she’d love to do more crafting with group in the future.

Elizabeth who is a psychologist from Switzerland and now working freelance in Cambodia, joined the creative writing workshop and said that she really liked how the teacher balanced directiveness and letting all participant to find their own way of creativity. “It was inspiring to see and exchange with other people’s ideas.”

Kinyei thanks to Jan Cornall who ran these workshops and hopefully we’ll enjoy seeing and working with her on some more creative things again in January.

Kinyei is looking for a volunteer to hang out with us, experience Battambang, and work alongside a Khmer team from January to March, to plan, organize, and host the first ever Trampoline Unconference in Battambang, Cambodia.

What is Trampoline?

Established in Melbourne, Australia three years ago, Trampoline is an unconference driven by participants who share what they find amazing. There is no specific topic – indeed, the goal is to share ideas from all different disciplines, industries and walks of life.

Cambodia is just beginning to explore the benefits of unconference type gatherings. Young changemakers in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap have facilitated and participated in a range of idea exchange forums the likes of TedxPP, BarCamp, and smaller break off gatherings. It’s an exciting time here, there is an energy and a charge that is palpable. As a catalyst for Trampoline Battambang, you’d get to witness the first of these idea exchanges in a community full of potential.

Thus you’ll have the opportunity to play a key role in getting this new event happening in Battambang, and encourage the spirit of social innovation, sharing and community in Cambodia. And because we need you located here with us, you’ll also get to experience the relaxed charm of Battambang while the weather’s at its best.

So what exactly will I be doing?

You will be working with a Khmer team to translate the Trampoline idea into something that fits the local context, and providing event planning and communications support. You’ll be putting your skills and talents to use for other Kinyei projects as well. We’ve got Trampoline pencilled in for late February or early March 2012.

Language training, mentorship and guidance will be provided by the Kinyei team – who don’t lack for experience in both attending and running Trampolines – so will you have plenty of support as you hit the ground running.

Ideally, you should excel in the following areas:

• proven ability to thrive in new, challenging environments
• excellent communication skills
• creative problem solving skills
• initiative taker
• desire to be helpful and work well with others across cultures

And for bonus points, you should also have some experience with:

• running events
• video production and/or social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook
• leveraging networks

This is a volunteer position and thus there is no wage.

What’s next?

Send an email to Pat (pat at freelancing-gods dot com) for more details about why you should come to Battambang.

Latest from the Cafe front: Barista trainings and Championships

We’re fast approaching our one year anniversary at Kinyei’s St 1.5 Cafe! Incredible to think that it’s been one year since we launched our Kickstarter campaign to get this whole thing off the ground, ran a remote training with our green staff and the Jasper folks, and opened our doors in Battambang.

There hasn’t been a minute to sit still so far; looking back at the past two months, it’s been a frenzied push to expand our team and into our upstairs space. We’d like to think these last several months have been a testament to the team’s hard work and endless energy for fulfilling Kinyei’s collaborative spaces a making the most of every opportunity that presents itself.

Barista Training in and out

We kicked off October with another round of hiring to ready ourselves for the tourist season, nearly upon us. Theavy, Sopheap, Seyla and Chouert, the cafe newcomers, are quickly acclimating to cafe life. Fortuitously, Kinyei was hosting volunteers James and Joel, pals from Australia, on site for 2 weeks around the same time (see post below for their blog). James, a coffee connoisseur with years of experience in the coffee industry back in Brisbane, used the two weeks to pass on his expertise.

Sopheap's first latte

James, with help from Katie and the Cafe team, developed a comprehensive Barista training manual and accreditation course, with a coffee appreciation component, covering coffee concepts from crop to cup.

This newly minted Barista Course has jumpstarted a new service for Kinyei’s cafe team – professional espresso machine training. So far the Kinyei team has facilitated our training for one barista from Art Deli in Siem Reap, and two baristas from a new cafe near Banteay Preab, Phnom Penh. The Cafe team did a fantastic job of delivering this training and received stellar feedback from the trainees. Sorn Sreyna commented about the benefits of the training,

“I feel excited that I can make a nice coffee now, I know clearly how to make many kinds of coffee and hot to steam a very nice milk.”

She then asked, “Can I come back to train again?”

Similarly the cafe team was excited to be able to share (and show off) their skills. Untac also noted that “the training was great but quite short. I would want at least a week if I were a trainee I would feel confused!”

Srey Na and Sopheap, barista trainees from Phnom Penh

Untac also incorporated YouTube instructables into the training himself, citing how helpful it was for him when he was learning to use YouTube to watch different milk steaming techniques. To be sure, making delicious espresso takes persistence and passion!

TOT for P2P

Kinyei’s senior Cafe staff also attended a train the trainer workshop led by the Women’s Reproductive Team from the Catholic Centre in Battambang at Kinyei. Perfect timing for the team to use their new training skills as we rolled out the Barista training curriculum to staff from cafes around Cambodia.

TOT P2P it's all happening

Soksabike tour guide Moth Pheap was happy for the chance to view experienced trainers to get ideas for leadership style and setting clear direction and focus to a task. Sopheap Khou appreciated that the trainers spent time to understand their audience, and become familiar with those they were going to train, including cultivating a friendly feeling between instructor and student. Phalla Yai pointed out that the training was just a first step, and that with limited time, there was limited potential for learning – she’d like to see more trainings like this in the future.

It was fun to see Kinyei’s different project teams come together to learn a general skill like leadership and training that they can bring back to their specific jobs, and use in peer to peer education whether that’s training new baristas in the cafe, new tour guides on the route, or any other hobby, interest or skill that they have.

Thanks again to Meg Battle, Theary and the team from the Catholic Church for putting together a super workshop!

Kinyei’s first entry into the Cambodian National Barista Champs

On the 20th of October Katie, Sean and Sakana crowded into a shared taxi to Phnom Penh to cheer on Untac in the 2011 Barista Championships at the Sofitel.

On the 21st of October Untac had 15 minutes to make and serve 12 coffees. He made four espressos, four Cappuccinos and four signature drinks. With help from fellow cafe staff, Untac concocted the ‘Kinyei’; a shot of espresso, a shot of ginger sugar syrup, latte milk and cinnamon sprinkled on top. The ‘Kinyei’ was served in a piccolo latte glass. Delicious…and innovative! Katie, Mel, Justin and I got the pleasure of tasting the ‘Kinyei’ during Untac’s practice round the day before the competition at St 1.5.

Untac brought his coffee making flare and charming personality to the floor to produce some stunning coffees. Have a look for yourself – Untac competes in National Barista Competition

“The three who won were very skillful, all the competitors have skills, but did worse during the competition, even me”, Untac noted. He attributed this to the nervousness all contestants felt, as none had been judged before. He also noted that there were two different machines and that the contenstents were randomly assigned to compete on; the participants all agreed the larger 2 Group Saaco machine was more optimal than the smaller single group machine. It was luck of the draw.

The crowned barista was from The Shop in Phnom Penh. Talk about steep competition, most of these baristas are churning out hundreds of espressos daily. We’re terribly stoked for Untac, he did us all proud in Phnom Penh!

Untac and Sakana scoping out the competition

The small Kinyei contingency was delighted to witness the pomp at the Cambodian Restaurant Association’s (CRA) barista competition. Sakana noted that she loved to watch the cooking competition “since cooking is something I’ve loved since I was little.” On Phnom Penh, she added “Romdeng restaurant was my  and the pumpkin cake at Living Room cafe.”

“The cafes in Phnom Penh are similar to Kinyei, but I got some new ideas about specials. At Kinyei we could have something like Banana Cappuccino”, Sean reported.

As for watching Untac compete, Sakana remarked “I was very scared for Untac!”

Untac just before his turn at the machine

“I was very happy when I watched Untac to make coffee, some time I want to help but this is a competition so I cannot”, lamented Sean.

Untac interjected that one of his favorite things was getting to know the other contestants from different places in Cambodia. Everyone was really friendly, and happy to share about their experiences. “While we played on the machines, people would come and share what they know. We’re still talking together on facebook.”

“I think next year Kinyei should send two baristas to compete” Sakana concluded. We couldn’t agree more.

An aside: Lucky for the team, the event was held as part of the CRA hospitality competition. You can imagine our elation as we witnessed competitors in the bedmaking, fruit carving, and bartending competitions.

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Jan Cornall travels the world teaching creative writing workshops. We’re happy to have the chance to host her at the Open Workshop for two sessions on Tuesday, December 20, one on creative writing and another on zine production. Here are the details:

The Zen of Zine Making – 11am-3pm, 20 Dec

Get some pointers on the Japanese art of haiku (three line poem) and haibun (descriptive haiku like prose)  then learn how to make a simple zine (small hand made book) to put them in. Working with handmade papers,fabric and found materials learn how to use folding and oriental stitching to create different kinds of zines and mini artist books. No experience necessary – just a creative spirit and desire to play with words and paper.

Workshop schedule includes time for lunch.

Seize the Moment Creative Writing Workshop – 6.30pm-8.30pm, 20 Dec

Have you always wanted to write a collection of stories or poems, travel memoir, life story or play around with fiction or non-fiction? Are you already writing but need a shot of inspiration to keep you going? In a creative and supportive atmosphere find out where to start, how to progress and set realistic goals for finishing. Revise the essential elements of writing; learn how to find your writers voice, develop descriptive detail, create interesting characters and find the structure that will bring your story to life. Using meditative techniques discover how easy it is to access your creative source on a daily basis and leave the workshop with a plan that will see you completing your writing project within months. All genres, all levels of experience welcome.

About Jan

Jan Cornall is a Sydney based writer, performer and teacher who supports writers through the long process of realising their creative work. The author of fifteen plays and musicals, a feature film, three CDs of songs and a novel, Jan teaches creative writing at writer’s centres, community colleges and universities in Australia and the Asia Pacific. Jan also leads writing retreats in inspirational locations: Bali, Fiji, Laos, Cambodia and the Australian desert. Dedicated to nurturing the unique attributes of each writer, each year a number of her students go on to publish with major publishing houses. www.writersjourney.com.au www.myspace.com/jancornall

Who’s it for?

Any age, genre, experience level welcome. Workshop will be in English (volunteer translators welcome), participants are welcome to write in their own language.

How to register?

Workshop places are limited so please register your interest to ensure a place.

Please email workshop@kinyei.org with:

Your name: Organisation (if applicable): What do you want to achieve in this workshop:

Where

Kinyei Cafe St 1.5 Battambang Town

As always, participation in Kinyei Open Workshops is free of charge. Look forward to seeing you there!

Two months ago, in October I was lucky enough to attend the most recent BarCamp in Phnom Penh.

What is BarCamp?

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BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Recently, BarCamp Phnom Penh 4 was celebrate at the University of Puthisastra, which is located in Phnom Phenh. It was a 2 day event for computer enthusiasts, technologists, IT professionals, mobile & web developers, bloggers, translators, entrepreneurs, and especially social media specialists.

Kinyei was invited to participate, share some experiences and learn about the latest innovations of technology, from applications software to operating system, wired networking to wireless technology and from offline to online business.

My experience at this great event

A Social Media in Cambodia session was run at this BarCamp

In the BarCamp event, I joined some workshops on topics such as Why we need more courage for ourselves by Soluy Loeurt, Social Media Cambodia by Melina Chan, and Travel with no money by Rithy Thul. I got some good ideas such as how to communicate better through Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail; and about how to travel without any money to spend on food, accommodation or anything. Life is struggle sometimes, but we can survive.

I especially remember one quote that the leader of the workshop said: “life is improvement”. This made me realise that even though life is a struggle, I should keep trying to solve the problems I face. And by attending BarCampPP, I now have more knowledge of technology and and communication.

For some reason every event we go to seems to produce pictures of people sitting around which never represent the buzz and kick that I remember the event being all about, and the ARUN business idea comp that just went by is no exception. So I want to make it clear that despite the picture to the left being of people in chairs and tidy clothes, the 2-day competition / symposium was really awesome and I’m already excited for next year’s.

Kinyei went down as facilitators to help the 3-person teams (2 Cambodian and 1 Japanese student each) identify social issues, conceive of solutions, and try to distill an innovative, workable business idea from all of that. With just 24 hours to do this from start to finish, the teams performed admirably and I think they can all feel justifiably proud of their efforts.

Despite going along as “facilitators”, the experience was really a learning one for us too. Seeing groups of other people trying to find the right balance of social impact and economic feasibility (although I suspect that’s false dichotomy), and trying to home in on a social problem sufficiently well-defined to begin to tackle throws the whole process into a new clarity. Here are the top four things we learned from the event:

**Well-defined is half done ** “Hunger” might be something you’re really passionate about solving, but as a problem for a social enterprise to tackle, it is really pretty vague. Often groups had to sacrifice their heroic attack on a colossal social problem in order to find one that was clearly defined enough that a solution in the form of a single business was possible. Something we found helped in this process was an iterative interrogation of the causes of their stated problem: “What causes hunger here?” and “Ok and what causes that?” until an approachable problem emerged.

Know your customers This is an entrepreneurship truism, and only more important when your enterprise is “social”. Frequently teams found they were trying to address problems and work with customers from a completely different socio-economic or cultural space to their own, and were therefore flying blind when it came to predicting their customers’ values and priorities. You need to be in touch with your customer base early and often, testing your critical assumptions in the real world to avoid potentially finding out one of them is critically wrong many months and thousands of dollars down the line.

Be flexible – about (almost) everything In the competition, teams were coming up with ideas from scratch. The businesses had no customer bases, no buildings, no one on payroll and no existing brands to worry about. In other words, the teams had everything to gain from re-thinking their ideas from the ground up in response to new information, and nothing to lose – yet frequently, we found people reluctant to re-think their business model after it had been conceived. The problem is that any team that is diligently exploring a given social problem will inevitably come up with game-changing insights or information during the process, and often these insights will show their existing solution to be less than ideal. Teams therefore need to be able to prioritize their social mission, and be prepared to throw out any and all business ideas that they discover don’t serve that, rather than staying attached to a business idea itself, and manipulating the social mission and impacts to it.

Your team is your single most valuable asset Finally, what was clearly obvious in the final presentations was that the passion, motivation and resources of the individuals in a team can make all the difference to potential investors (or in our case, judges.) The greatest social business idea in the world is only as good as the team that is going to implement it.

You can find out more about the event from ARUN, and Sen Tharo did a write-up you should probably check out.

The nascent social entrepreneurship culture in Cambodia is really exciting and it’s going to be interesting to see what the ARUN students end up doing with their ideas now that this competition is over (students, write to us to let us know!). With two more similar events coming up in the next few months, it’s obvious that support for social business is growing here, so hopefully the scene is here to stay.