(I wrote this piece about two weeks ago while in Cambodia but hadn’t gotten around to posting yet….) Today I was in a taxi with seven Cambodian men. Usually a taxi sells out at eight people: four in the back, two in the front passenger seat, and one more paying customer sharing the seat with [...]
In business school you are surrounded by people who believe in the power of markets. There are people in my class who are passionate about freeing markets, about scaling enterprises, and about generating profits. Yet some of those SAME people are advocates of giving things away in development work. I have had countless discussions with [...]
I was just reminded about a friend, with whom I used to work, who wakes up every morning* and turns to whomever first crosses his path and says: “Good morning! It’s a great day to be alive!” *No really, EVERY morning. And, if you wake up near him at a campsite for a few days [...]
This is a guest blog post by Allie Hoffman of The Pari Project. Before I left Cambodia, Allie took over the TEDxPhnomPenh license and recently organized a team to execute Cambodia’s second TEDx event. Below she describes our motives for starting this event in the first place, how doing something “for the local people” only [...]
Everyone wants to “support girls”. Being a girl myself, I think that is great and all…. but let’s not forget the boys! In Cambodia, there are many sectors which only provide jobs to women: many garment factories only employ women for their line jobs, there are many silk weaving programs and NGO interventions targeting women’s [...]
About a year ago, I went to TEDx in Bangkok with my friend and co-worker, Rithy, and immediately afterwards we decided that we wanted to organize at TEDx event in Cambodia. One year later, with a team of 7 other fabulous people, we helped bring TEDx to Phnom Penh for the first time. Our goals [...]
For the most part, my life in Cambodia is not nearly as “exotic” as people living in cities like Chicago and Cleveland might think it is. I ride my bike around our small town, I work in an office with cement walls (though of course the lack of air-conditioning and high temperatures can make it [...]