Day: June 2, 2019

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Opportunity To See Again

The Khmer Sight Foundation is a non-profit organization that offers free eyes’ services include eye surgery for Cambodian people. The Khmer Sight Foundation had been helping the Cambodian people for many years already. A lot of people, especially the elders were very grateful for the organization because they help to bring back their eyesight. 

During every eyes’ screening, many potential eye surgery patients will be selected. Some of them are afraid to do the surgery. So in one of our videos, we had showcased the convenience and painless process of the surgery. Another video, we had interviewed many patients who did the surgery about their experience and we would share it to the potential patients so that they won’t be scared to come to do the surgery.

In addition to the video that we had created, we had also successfully organized three eyes’ screening and got a lot of potential patients that the organization will help to make them see again.

I love helping my society. Being able to see patients feel surprised and happy after they can see again is a very influential moment for me.

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Khmer Modeled United Nation

I had participated in many Modeled United Nations (MUN) events before. It allows the participants to discuss real-world issues professionally that follows the United Nation guidelines and protocol. Being able to participate in the discussion had influence myself to be more open and expose to many more problems; but, I want more: I want to lead the discussion. Being able to interact with other delegates and communicate with them in English had helped me in English public speaking skills; but, I want more: I want to interact with others in Khmer – our native language.

This is my second time chairing and leading the formal discussion in Khmer, it’s my second time in the Liger Khmer Modeled United Nation (LKMUN).

It feels very specials and challenging at the same time to lead and authorize the mockup United Nation meeting in Khmer. I think is it essential to make those concerning issues and using the different United Nation protocol in our language because that will diversify the different perspective on the topics. In addition, this will also give the opportunity for more people to being able to give their opinions on the varied issues.

 

 

 

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Wheelchair of Wonders

This is more than an engineering project. I went through a life-changing moment with the successful completion of our product for this project. This is the Disabled Animals project. It is a project where we built products to help disabled animals with their mobility.

At first, we wanted to create prosthetic limbs for animals. Since this particular topic is not the specialty of neither our facilitator nor our team, we had the mission of collecting necessary information for building prosthetics. We contacted and visited many places. The students took the lead and handled all of the communication. We then visited the Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics, VSL clinic, Animal Rescue Cambodia, and the Phnom Penh Animal Welfare Society. Even though we visited many places, we still needed more information so we started reaching out to other people globally. We had video conferences with an animal wheelchair expert from the United States and collaborated with two engineering students from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

After speaking to many different people, we decided to shift our idea of the product. Our new goal was to build a wheelchair for an animal instead of a prosthetic. With our new goal, we started looking up different designs on the internet and found a few that were suitable for our project. Within the coming weeks, we’ve found the animal, took the measurements, and made the first prototype. We tested our prototype with the animal for weeks and weeks and, at last, we had our final design.

We delivered the wheelchair to Quinn, the dog. We put her in the wheelchair and expected her to move and walk smoothly. However, she was just standing still. It was her first time using the wheelchair so she might have been a bit shy. Then, she started to happily walk. From our observations, we could see that she was satisfied and comfortable with her customized wheelchair.

Being able to see her walk smoothly on our wheelchair without dragging her two back amputated legs was an unforgettable moment for our team.

Now, we are working on helping out more animals, including a cat with a spinal injury and a dog with two disabled front legs.