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| Phnom Penh Warriors hard at work! |
If someone told us Singaporean youth could teach others about farming, we probably wouldn’t believe it. Yet, a group of Singapore Polytechnic (SP) students did just that in Cambodia this September! Not only did our city-bred youth teach innovative farming methods to Cambodian youth, they also designed and constructed a mushroom shed and vegetable farm at the Prosenchey Vocational Training Institute in Phnom Penh.
Calling themselves ‘Phnom Penh Warriors’, the landscaping, engineering, and architecture majors dreamt up a Youth Expedition Project (YEP) where they partnered Mercy Relief to address real needs at the Training Institute. These included a request for a mushroom farming shed, and solutions to the high death rate at their fish pond and low harvests at their vegetable farm.
To investigate the cause of low harvests, the warriors conducted tests on the soil samples received from the site of the vegetable farm and discovered that the soil was infertile for planting crops.
“Together, the warriors worked hard to generate solutions to help the local (Cambodian) community.” – Qiao Yuan
Solutions were then developed and tailored to the unsuitable soil composition and lack of irrigation facilities at the Prosenchey Vocational Training Institute. That’s not all! To test the feasibility of their solutions, the tireless youths also designed and constructed a prototype of the mushroom shed and vegetable farm while they were in Singapore.
When they arrived in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian Mercy Relief partner introduced them to youths from the Union Of Youth Federations of Cambodia (UYFC), who became partners, translators, and friends to these Warriors.
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| Building the shed |
At the Prosenchey Vocational Training Institute, the team interviewed trainees to understand their background and living conditions with the help of the translators from UYFC.
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| Phnom Penh Warriors in the farm they’ve built! |
The efforts of the SP students continue to bear fruit in Cambodia after the mission! The farm has improved food sustainability in the Training Institute and both the mushroom shed and farm are now serving as “practice fields” for agriculture trainees.
Even though it was a brief 12-day mission in Cambodia, the cultural exchange that they’ve experienced continues to spur them towards greater community involvement back in Singapore.
Photo credits: Project Phnom Penh
