Drug Prevention

Civic Education and Advocacy Unit

Some background information

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, with an average per capita income of approximately $300. Around 36% of the population live below the poverty line, around 50% are under 25 years old. Cambodia was colonised by France for almost one century. But, after gaining the independence from France in 1953, the country enjoyed political stability and an economy which was considered robust for the region and the time. In 1975, however, the country was drawn into a conflict and was destroyed by five years of fierce civil war called the Khmer Rough regime (1975-1979). This difficult period left Cambodian society with violence, hunger, and poverty almost everywhere.
In the last few years, Cambodian youths are facing many problems like gangster groups, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, drugs etc. It is the time for the government to initiate a national youth policy, with the participation of all youths.

Although democracy had been restarted over 13 years ago, KYA did not see any fulfilled implementation of democratic structures, transparency or decentralization, especially on district or provincial level yet. In order to make the implementation of local decentralization as well as the national youth policy run smoothly, it really needs the people's participation. The social civil organizations play a very important role to educate people in the community to understand their role in the local decentralization process. Khmer Youth Association plays an important role to educate people and members of commune councils to understand, why it is important for all people in the community to be active in communal development, and why they need to know what advocacy is.

What we want

• a society where youths actively participate in democratic processes and in the promotion of human rights
• to promote the participation of people in local development processes
• to encourage young people/youths to join in decision making and to share their concerns for developing their own community
• to collect ideas and needs of youths in every province and city in Cambodia to put them into a draft of National Youth Policy

What we do

We are working with citizens and members of commune councils. Those people can be anything as teachers, members of community development, village chiefs or villagers from the same commune/district. The age group we focus on is between 24 and 35 years. Our unit divides into two parts, the Civic Education and the Advocacy, whereas the Civic Education part provides trainings, workshops, networking, research and takes care about poster and brochure printing; the Advocacy part organizes youth conferences and roundtable discussions and publishes the newsletter called "Youth & Democracy".

Where we work

We are working in six communes in each of the following provinces: Svay Rieng, Prey Veng, Takeo, Kampong Cham, and Siem Reap.