The Youth Coalition of Unity and Development (YCUD) is an organisation that stands for the development, participation and wellbeing of youths. We interviewed Mr Pha Sina from the YCUD to learn about his organisation and what they aim to achieve.
This interview has been edited for length, clarity and flow.
Can you tell us more about YCUD?
YCUD is a coalition of youth organisations which consists of seven NGO members. YCUD is working to advocate for youth representations in the country, especially by advocating on a national level to promote youths in leadership roles in the government and the leadership roles in other workplaces.
How did the idea for YCUD’s online platform come about?
We can say that we have youth members in our member NGOs and other provinces. They do separate activities, and their voices are split. Their voices are not mobilized and are not unified, so we came up with the idea that we can have a platform that can be used in the provinces and by our different NGO members. They can come together and join, so that we have a more unified voice, a bigger voice, for youths to advocate for the demands or solutions that they need.
What is the expected impact of YCUD in Cambodia?
After launching the platform we hope to see more and more youths coming to use the platform, because on the platform we will put the topics mostly from the youths themselves, and mostly on issues that are most relevant to them. They can join and participate with, for example, one of the functions on the platform is debate on issues related to them. So by unifying all the voices and collecting all the voices on the platform, you can use that as the evidence to advocate to the government and the decision makers to participate with providing solutions to the youths. So by this, we hope to see more and more of youths’ voices being recognized by leaders and by the government.
What is your opinion on the impact that technology can have on the youth of Cambodia?
Actually everyone knows that Cambodian youths are having enough smartphones to use and that the Internet connection is widespread in Cambodia and it is also cheap. We can say that most youths own smartphones and have Internet connection, so it’s easier for them to get connected through their mobile phones, as long as we have the right platform for them. This is a good chance for us to build the platform, and try to test with youths to see whether it is good for youths or not. So if it is good for youths, then we’ll try our best to update the platform according to the youths’ needs, so that we can get more youths to use the platform. The right technology helps them to get connected in the right way and through the right connection, they can become big enough for the right causes that help make their society prosper.
What does YCUD hope to achieve in the coming years?
What we really want to achieve is to mobilize youths on a platform. To have thousands of youths or all of the youths network members from our member NGOs on the platform. We want to encourage them to engage with us on a regular basis so that we can get a combination of their voices to be a voice that is big enough to advocate for solutions for them. That is what we hope for.
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