Cambodia remains a country plagued with constant challenges to the maintenance of its citizens’ basic human rights, from abuse of child labor and trafficking to widespread domestic violence and political malfeasance. Awareness of these issues and knowledge of about what can be done to avoid or resolve them is sorely lacking, especially in rural areas where access to relevant information is poor or inconsistent.

To be held on December 10 to honor international Human Rights Day, Shine will showcase the Human Rights related activities of individuals and NGOs around Battambang in order to raise awareness of and foster engagement with local human rights issues. The event is being organized by Kinyei in partnership with Buddhism For Development (BFD) and will feature a screening of video profiles created under the Profile Project, a collaboration of local NGOs, students, and volunteers from around the world, as well as a range of NGO-run activities designed to create a fun, lively atmosphere that will raise awareness of the great work being done for Human Rights in the area. In partnership with Buddhism for Development, with participation from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Battambang.

Partnering with the Cambodian NGO, Support Children and Young People, this project will engage young citizens of Battambang in a series of workshops teaching media skills to ultimately produce small human rights documentaries. These will be a pivotal part of Shout! the Human Rights festival to be held on the banks of the river Sangke in Battambang on December 10th, 2009.

Project Soup is a collaboration platform for community development which operates by fostering human relationships across the globe. Used as a platform for individuals and organizations around the world to share resources, stories and facilitate lasting partnerships, Project Soup fosters real personal engagement across geographic and cultural boundaries.

Catering to folks looking for a community project to contribute time or resources to, people working on a social project that could use a hand as well as those just seeking a transparent, honest view into the life of community development projects, Project Soup offers a vehicle for connection and self expression. The site will be a platform for social engagement and project tracking for volunteer projects and community development. While similar sites exist, they generally focus on either institutional volunteer staffing or formal projects which do not allow for the flexibility of real world initiative – and in almost all cases they are not built for the social media era. Project Soup aims to make self expression and storytelling easier and more accessible by making participation simpler, integrating existing social and multimedia tools to add rich storytelling capabilities, and offering features which help users understand and focus on the progress and needs of a wide variety of projects and initiatives.

Following our strong belief in the power of community developed, crowd-sourced solutions, we are developing Project Soup as an open source initiative based on Drupal (specifically OpenAtrium), and are looking for developers and designers with familiarity with Drupal, PHP and/or web design to contribute to the project. We think it can contribute huge changes to the field of international development, all we need is your help.