MTV EXIT END GENDER VIOLENCE

Hey so its been along time coming but the project went down with the help and support of so many of you in America and the great turn out of volunteers. The event took place in Koh Kong down south in Cambodia on the boarder. Well this place was pretty far for everyone to get to so it was quite the treck for the 15 volunteers that came out to help however its considered a beach so many of the volunteers were excited about this most of them despite being from Cambodia have never been to koh kong so it was an over all adventure with a work component.  Liz had the brilliant ideas to get shirts made up so we could look more legitimate so she had these shirts designed and they came out amazing all the volunteers loved them! Naturally the first part of the project had to go not as excepted so that morning me and liz talked to an mtv exit rep who failed to mention to us that the venue changed which cost us 8 more dollars to have our Cambodian tent moved to the river side. However this new local was perfect for foot traffic and getting a variety of age ranges to entices people to draw on the shirts we did have prizes liz went out and bought some cell phones tennis rackets etc naturally the real prize was the cell phone. I also might add I never go the donation of shirts so I had to buy them Khmer market style u r wondering what this is refer to pictures but I bought 500 random shirts and had to wash them all by hand for this event my host mom started to pity me after the first 200 and started to help me =) but we ended up needing about 250 shirts for the event.  We bought a variety of art supplies hoping the shirts would be really unique and different this year, which I can say they were interesting however for the most part they were always done in big groups of 5 or more I guess its just Khmer culture. The shirts messages were more stop violence vs personal experiences though there was a few that differed from the normal message. It was cool to see how much people liked the opportunity to do art work it was fun to watch someone who has never used spray paint get to try there hand at it lol if you see all the scissors we bought were used as a stencil for said spray paint they are colors of the rainbow. All the volunteers also created shirts to show ex of ideas in hopes they would not all be the same which sort of worked bc I think the using paints on ones hands was pretty popular and they really liked to use the Chinese money and chain. Despite me and liz being less that ideal organizer the event was pretty well executed until it came time for the prizes and it sort of became a cluster fuck. Instead of us just picking the winner we let the participants decide in order to do this we wanted them to line up behind the shirt they thought was the best of course some cheating occurred where one group would have a lot more people with them but ahh it seemed like the only fair thing to do bc they really wanted to win. Jentee who has never done work like this and I thought would be the hardass started to feel sorry for the kids telling me what will we do when they don’t win bc they all kept asking her if they were going to be number one. The khmer Eileen across the street from me is a really quite shy person but she has a knack for education and handing out materials it was cool to see her come out of her shell and do more ngo work. Some peace corps staff came out to and liz students it was just a mix of so many types of people which made the event work so well but to see all these people interact for a weekend while entertain did become draining. Later in the day mtv exit remps came over to apologize about the mis communication I think in part bc the event ended up being bigger then they excepted and we really did help promote the concert for later that night thought not going to lie I wish they took us more seriously to begin with. That’s the thing about being a two man ngo with no name or back up or funding you have to put up with being considered lower of the food chain I hope this changes for me one day. Another cool thing that happened was some random guy came while I was at lunch to take pictures of the shirts and wanted to buy some of them and gave us 30 dollars for the cool idea.  That night what I thought at the time was the group’s idea to meet up for dinner at some khmer soup place is when things started to go ary. So a majority of the khmer people that came with us wanted to go eat dinner as a group and everyone seemed fine with that and going to get soup however that was not the case bc all the Americas don’t really like soup including me however bc I thought this is what the majority wanted I just planned to suck it up go and get food later. This was an issues bc they over order pots of soup and then I guess they thought even people who did not eat should pay however khmer culture they of course would never say it directly so instead certain people where upset sulking my khmer tutor was one of these people. That night we split up and some of went to the concert club and others got more food  it was not until the next morning that I started to realize something was sort of not right sigh what I mean by this half the group wanted to go to the thai market and the rest wanted to go to a waterfall or something. We had two cars however bc of the night be4 my khmer tutor in particular was on his guard to get his way which he is suborned to begin with but he would not listen to a word I said to him that morning. People often joke that him and me fight like brother and sister anyways I was trying to get him to understand we should take one car to each place not to leave people out but he rushed off and refused. Last night I talked to him about this cuz I was sort of pissed about his infantile behavior bc at that point and time he still never mentioned he was pissed. Anyways he realized last night he was wrong and he was sorry I sort of feel a bit like I don’t know if I could have changed that situation or handled it better. Looking back though at that point and time the project was done I was not going to boss people around or take a leadership role for where people want to go in their free time. Well the hour they promised they would be at the market was more like 2 and ½ so we did not go to a waterfall bc of lack of time we went to the resort with the mangroves and then had a huge sea food lunch with crab etc it was soo delicious. We headed back at 130 which means we got in really late and we also had to stop 5 million times on the way back home for fruit and other things for people to bring back to the village but overall despite some mis communication and cultural difference I am happy with the outcome of the project and the trip in general. Peace out from the other side of the world. 

this is how it pretty much was all day for us minus lunch time

2 of liz's students starting there own shirt

she let the kids paint her hair jk

group effort to make a shirt to win the prize

the kid who made this was like 8 he came to late and missed his prize we felt sorry for him and gave him 5 bucks translation of shirt women are gentile and nice so you should not hit them.

alot of volunteers like this shirts haha whoever this kid is has a british english teacher love it!

hanging up the shirts we like the best for the vote

Gender and Development in Cambodia aka GADC has the best eng khmer gender educational stuff ever! this is some of the kids reading the news on pressing gender issues. 

500 shirts washed by hand wish i could say i have arms of steal but nope.

I think this picture sums up all the types of people that helped make this project what it was!

PS STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART OF THIS PROJECT ART GALLERY AT METAHOUSE SO EXCITED!