HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
Having learned that most Cambodian youths have spent most of their time on entertaining programs, alcohol consumption, and paying little attention to sociopolitical developments after graduating from college, Ou Ritthy established a youth-led group called Politikoffee in July 2011. Simply put, Politikoffee gathers youth at coffee shops every Saturday afternoon to drink coff
ee, not alcohol, and talk politics, not entertaining programs. Politikoffee is a group of young, enthusiastic, and tech-savvy Cambodian youth who love discussing socioeconomic and political developments and democratization in Cambodia and the region. They are democracy-loving youth who genuinely care for their national interests. Till now, we have had more than 200 members who often come to join our discussion, and some 50 are active regular members who join Politikoffee every weekend. The number of members keeps growing. Besides the 200 members, we have around 400 other online youth who join online discussions and have requested to be our members. However, as our policy, we accept those who are group members, provided they have at least attended our face-to-face discussion once. With more members involved in the discussion, Ritthy in early 2013 invited the three most active members to be Politikoffee co-founders: Ly Malin, Lach Vannak, and Chheng Channy. Politikoffee aims at cultivating “liberal democracy” in Cambodia through raising sociopolitical awareness and promoting a culture of discussion, debate, and challenge among youths based on principles of national interest, solidarity, and fraternity. We want to create a democratic political culture in which, to our belief, behaviors of political participation are the starting point and stepping stone to a new, promising political culture for Cambodia. Pragmatically, in the Cambodian context, an informal way of political dialogue among youths and their peers is the most effective. We first started with political discussion, political debate, knowledge and skill sharing from seniors and experts, and analytical writings. Currently, among our active 200 political discussants, we have 30 committed, dream-to-be independent analysts. They have theoretically learned from senior independent analysts, and now they are starting to write analytical articles and publish them on www.politikoffee.com. So far, this emerging young generation in Cambodia has energetically discussed and shared information and knowledge every weekend. Having informed and learned from each other, these youths share and spread political and electoral information via social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. They did an admirable job during the 2013 National Assembly election by becoming active citizen journalists to spread electoral irregularities and break news. We fearlessly and openly speak our minds about the fact that Politikoffee Forum is informally organized by peer groups who get to know each other well. Therefore, everything we say is outspoken, independent, open-minded, amiable, and responsible, yet challenging and thought-provoking. We wish to see Politikoffee continue to play a vital role in cultivating a democratic political culture in Cambodia by changing the new generation of Cambodia from perceiving politics as a threat to individuals’ lives to seeing politics as one of the most significant parts of the life and future of individuals and nations. PLAN:
To achieve this, in the short future, we want to own a coffee shop named “Politikoffee” where politics, democracy, and coffee lovers meet up and discuss current political issues. Basically, Politikoffee Shop is designed to function as a one-stop service to provide Cambodian people and foreigners who come to visit, work, or live in Cambodia with complete up-to-date socioeconomic, political, electoral, social media, and youth situations in Cambodia by just spending one hour discussing and drinking a cup of coffee. We believe in political evolution, not revolution, prevailing in Cambodia. ACTIVITIES:
We first welcome participants and provide weekly socioeconomic and political news briefings. Then we start our political discussion or debate, which we set several days ago. In case we have a speaker, after updating the weekly news brief, the speaker starts sharing the main ideas of the set topic for some 30 minutes, then the remaining two hours are for exchanging views and challenging. For the last four years, we have discussed, debated, and been challenged. Interestingly, since May 2014, we have initiated a Young Analyst program. Since then, what we have shared and discussed has been put into analytical writing. GOAL:
A democratic political culture prevails in Cambodia, resulting from raising socioeconomic, legal, and political awareness and improving the culture of discussion, debate, and challenge among youth. The responsible political participation and socialization of youth are the main catalysts for transforming Cambodia towards a better democratic system based on the principles of rule of law, democratic governance, and sustainable development.
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