The proposal is to develop a social media training program for community-based organizations and grassroots activists working on human rights in Cambodia, with the long-term objective being to increase the amount of information related to human rights that is shared domestically and internationally. The training will include a hard and soft-copy toolkit designed to impart the know-how and tools to create successful and compelling citizen media.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Phnom Penh
Describe the specific community with whom you will be working.
The training will be designed for community-based organizations and local activists. The toolkit will also be available publicly online. Social media is currently underutilized in Cambodia by activists as a tool to affect change due to several factors, one being a lack of knowledge regarding the potential of these tools. This creates a bottleneck as regards information sharing, which can be avoided if activists can share information directly.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
The content that will be created will be reports – in text or audio-visual formats – of human rights violations or human rights-related events, happening at the community level in Cambodia. The content will focus on what the community is experiencing, what community members are doing to address human rights violations and records of activism, in a format that can be shared with and used by a wider audience.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established that will contribute to the success of the project.
CCHR already works closely with many community-based organizations and local activists and regularly provides documentation and monitoring trainings and organizes community forums throughout Cambodia. CCHR will use those existing connections to implement a social media training program. CCHR will also seek to engage other large national NGOs to expand the training program.
How many participants do you think will be involved in your project?
CCHR will aim at training an initial 40 participants, with 10 participants each from 4 communities. Participants will be chosen from existing CCHR partners who are already active in their communities and who indicate interest in receiving the training. In addition, CCHR will consider the existing technology in the communities – including access to internet – in order to determine the potential success of the training program.
Besides the microgrant funding, what other resources and support are you seeking for your project to ensure its success?
CCHR would benefit from learning from other organizations that have engaged rural communities in using citizen media to document local issues and to raise awareness on a larger scale, especially in countries where internet penetration remains low. While CCHR is familiar with the local context, it is always helpful to learn from others.
Contact name
LACH Vannak
Organization
Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR)