Our indefatigable intern Seavyi has recently launched an exciting new project called Khmer Stories in partnership with Dewey International University and five local child centered organizations. The project exemplifies what Kinyei is about: collaboration, cultural integrity, and utilization of social media.

Khmer Stories (https://khmerstories.kinyei.org/) collects traditional Khmer stories and legends with the aim of preserving, compiling, and sharing these folk tales. All the stories are illustrated by kids from around Battambang at Dewey International University, Tean Thor Association, Children’s Future International, Village Focus Cambodia and The Slum Project.

Khmer Stories is part of the 5D club’s worldwide network for collecting and sharing stories. More stories are coming soon, so continue to check the website!

Kinyei is delighted to announce that “Kinyei Headquarters” is no longer a cheeky reference to our house in Battambang. Kinyei now has two (tiny) stories of 100% Battambang office space which we are now making make thorough use of. Using the magic of semantics and the power of intention, we have transformed our office space into a Collaboration Space.

This is an open space which is available for locals and visitors to use for peer-learning and co-working, a place where people can come to develop, source materials, and execute projects and ideas. Our goal for this space is to foster collaboration and support local, grassroots initiatives by providing an office space, internet, networking, and specialized coaching.

In addition to encouraging the development of individual initiatives, we are also actively creating a peer-learning programme in which anyone with specific knowledge or a specialized skill set can come use the facilities to share and teach what they know to the public. These can be run by visiting or local volunteers on virtually anything they want to teach. We have already hosted two peer-learning workshops in our collaborative space — one on the art of visual storytelling and another on child safety.

Please contact us if you live in or are passing through Battambang and are interested in sharing your experience with anything from yoga to land title law, or are simply looking for a co working space with an emphasis on collaborations!

For the past two months or so, Kinyei has been developing a social enterprise to help bring in funding for Kinyei’s projects. The enterprise, called SoksaBike (a play on the traditional Khmer greeting of ‘Soksabai’ which roughly translates to ‘Are you happy and healthy?’ or, more prosaically, ‘How are you?’) is an educational bicycle tour of the beautiful Battambang countryside. Along a shaded route lined with banana palms, fruit orchards, and traditional wooden houses, the tour stops at several family-run cottage industries, such as rice paper, fish paste (prohoc), Khmer noodles, and rice wine. At each stop, the tourists are shown the traditional method of production, and have the opportunity to ask questions and sample the products.

[this project is no longer in operation.]Connect Cambodia was a Kinyei facilitated initiative using community wireless deployments to facilitate information access in Cambodian communities. Currently in the process of setting up initial testbed deployments around Battambang, we’re always looking for additional collaboration.

The Profile Project is an experiment in ad hoc collaboration in the international development sector. Short video profiles will showcase the human rights work being done on the ground in Battambang and screened at the Shout! Human Rights Festival on December 10th, 2009.

The Profile Project works like this:

1. International volunteer writes up an idea for a video
2. Cambodian volunteers here in Battambang gather the footage for it
3. International volunteer edits the video together and sends it over for the Human Rights Day festival in Battambang

The Profile Project is always looking for additional collaborators to produce videos. If you have the ability to edit video and the desire to engage with local reps and NGOs who are working support human rights in Cambodia, sign up and join the discussion.

To get started, check out the list of participating NGOs, then ask some questions or put your hand up in the Project Profile forum.

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.

If you can contribute, join us on the project site.

Showcasing Battambang’s Human Rights Community

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.

How do I get involved? Shine is a collaborative event based on the open involvement of Battambang’s entire NGO and social enterprise community, and everyone is welcome to join. We are looking for organizations and individuals to run engaging presentations, performances or mini events at Shine to highlight their involvement with the local community on human rights issues. If you or your organization is interested in joining, please email us at shine@kinyei.org.