The number of Cambodian students awarded the scholarship from different funders to pursue Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree and Doctoral degree at Chulalongkorn University has been increasing from year to year. Some of them had successfully graduated whereas others find it difficult to achieve their degree smoothly. The majority of students are difficult to adapt their life to new living environment, food, language, networking and accommodation. Few of them were very isolated and found no one to consult. As a result, very few scholars were unsatisfied and failed to meet requirements which lead to the suspension or termination of scholarship.
Due to these problems, all Cambodian students at Chulalongkorn University had gathered and initiated an idea to establish a student association. Since then, the first meeting was held on November 3, 2012 and the Cambodian Student Association at Chulalongkorn University, called CamSACU was triumphantly established within 19 members at that time. Consequently, under the majority vote held on November 2, 2013, the second generation, which had Ms. SOEUNG Keo Panha was the president of Association, was created. In this generation, the Cambodian Student Association at Chulalongkorn University was renamed the Cambodian Student Group of Chulalongkorn University (CamCU), after having consultation with the Vice President for Student Affairs of Chulalongkorn University, Assoc. Prof. Tanit Tongthong, This is because the university has a minimum requirement of 250 students as member to be named as an association.
In the third generation, there were four volunteers were nominated as group representatives. Under the majority vote held on November 2, 2014, three of them were elected. Mr. PHAL Sereiratha was elected the president of the group, Mr. THONG Sina and Mr. SIV Oudom were elected as vice president of the group.
The fourth generation of 2015 – 2016 were led by eight volunteer administrators namely Mr. Khleang Sovann (President), Mr. Yoang Sothoan (First Vice President), Mr. Tum Serey Vathana (Second Vice President), Mr. Eung Nguonsong (Student Coordinator), Mr. Phath Chamraen (Accountant and Language Coordinator), Mr. Khiev Kanal (Culture Coordinator), Mr. Chheng Chhunla (Social Networking Coordinator), and Mr. Yin Vinda (Sport Coordinator).
CamCU is a volunteer base entity, non-political and non-profit association that aims to
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Create the network among Cambodian students studying at Chulalongkorn University;
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Develop learning activities toward high academic achievement and public knowledge;
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Promote Khmer culture
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Build cooperation with Cambodian Agencies, Cambodian students associations at other universities, local and international NGOs.
In order to achieve this goal, CamCU had developed its work plan with numbers of activities for the previous generations. Some activities were managed with satisfactory results while the others faced to many challenges. The results, challenges, and feedback of the activities are described in the following sections.