Start of promotion

Today was the promotion start for the application training. So it is time to tell you exactly about the stuff I’m doing here right now. I work for the Asia Urbs Project III which is a project co-financed by the European Union. It’s European partners are the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation in Cambodia, BBJ-Consult, the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis and the City of Spoleto in Italy. The Cambodian partners are the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap as well as the Cambodian ministry of the interior.
Asia Urbs’ mission is to built a working municipality in both pilot districts with the objective to decentralize the public administration and to make it more transparent and democratic. Most of Cambodia’s administration is still centralistic organized.
In the course of theses reformations new offices have been established. Asia Urbs installed a Ombudsman, responsible for the complaints of the citizens, the One Window Service Office, which is an information point and instantly sends the inquiring citizen to the office responsible for his needs as well as a Job Placement Agency (JPA) to reduce adolescent unemployment and a tourist information. Since Cambodia has no history of Job Agencies their installation has so far failed miserably. Students usually find jobs through a vast connection network. So we have changed the concept from being a Job Provider to an information and service provider. We have so far collected material of all the universities (note that university is not a protected term – basically everything can call itself university) in the Battambang area as well as of schools and training providers. On the basis of this material we established a database which helps students to find the ideal school for them. It’s a bit useless, because all the language schools mainly offer English and the universities only offer Business Studies, Management, Tourism and Hospitality, Computer Science and sometimes Education. There are more courses and universities in Phnom Penh, but not here in Battambang.
The main objective for my time being here is to update and complete this database and to organize an application training in Siem Reap as well as Battambang. In Khmer tradition one didn’t need to apply to get a job, it was enough if the person new the employers son or another relative. In big corporations, hotels and enterprises as well as international NGOs it is common to apply in English. Cover letter and CV have to be written in English, the interview is also carried out in English. Most Cambodians speak a little English, their written language skills are pretty bad though. Our task therefore is to organize a one-day-training course to give students an idea on how an application is done and provide them with some information material. So we’re currently promoting the training and planning the lessons.