5 powerful leadership lessons I learnt from Cambodian students

When life gave us a lemon, we didn’t make lemonade; we made a lemonade factory. Back in 2009, our 14-year-old daughter was denied a life-changing school trip to Cambodia to volunteer with disadvantaged rural families. We decided to embrace the opportunity and travelled to Cambodia as a family, volunteering to teach English at a rural school in Siem Reap province.

Those two weeks changed the course of our lives, and the lives of thousands of rural Cambodian students and their families. Our students were all the children of survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime and the ensuing civil war – while their parents were illiterate, they understood the value and empowerment of education. We returned to volunteer in Cambodia several more times and in 2011 founded the Cambodia Rural Students Trust NGO (CRST), with the vision of educating future leaders.

CRST is a unique Non-Government Organisation (NGO) because it’s entirely led and managed by our students. Through formal education, extensive mentoring and the opportunities to gain hands-on practical skills, the students of CRST also lead and manage projects in areas as diverse as women’s empowerment, energy poverty, social inequity and environmental degradation, reaching thousands of beneficiaries annually.

Our students accept the challenge to go from the rice fields to world-leading organisations, from fishing boats to boardrooms, from working in restaurants to representing government ministries. Their inspirational journeys empower them and their families from poverty to middle class in eight years.

So what have we learned from our experiences? These are just 5 of the powerful leadership lessons we’ve learnt from our Cambodian students –

1. Most barriers are in our heads, not in our reality, and most people give-up before they leave their headspace. By implementing The Five Step Process (dream big, plan, act, correct and continue), we have shown our students that nothing is impossible. Leadership is a set of skills that anyone can learn, practice and own – begin with the end in mind and then work back to what you need to do to get there. Nak was the eldest son of an impoverished rural family; he was our first NGO Manager, when he was in grade 12 in high school. Just 11 years after graduating from high school, he’s completed his bachelor degree, his master degree and is running his own real estate business in Phnom Penh, employing over 20 team members. Nothing is impossible.
2. Education and quality mentorship shape lives, allowing the next generation of humanity to step in to their responsibilities to help change other people’s lives too. When the tide comes in, we all rise. Yeat’s parents were subsistence farmers and believed that his education would just waste his time and the little money they had. After encountering numerous hardships, Yeat graduated from high school, joined CRST and was mentored through several management and leadership roles while at university. He continued on to his master degree and developed a successful business in Phnom Penh, joining Cambodia’s middle class. He bought his parents their first mobile phone, their first motorbike and even their first ever holiday. He is also supporting his younger sister’s education at a private school, paying it forward many times over.
3. Seek your people, the ones who understand that leverage and collaboration accelerate impact, allowing everyone to reach further, faster. While maintaining a ‘we before me’ philosophy, seek to add value to others, so they can add value to you. Should you no longer be aligned, respectfully separate and bless them on their future journey – lifelong friendships are sadly too few. Linne was the young Registrar at Angkor University when we became friends at the time we founded the NGO. He changed several jobs over the years, yet we always kept in touch. Today he is the Deputy Governor of Siem Reap Province and we collaborate on numerous community-based projects, from providing clean water to thousands of rural students, to planting thousands of trees. You are the company you keep.
4. We live in a world of plenty – there is absolutely enough for everyone, we just need a little ‘wealth redistribution’, but that’s not how many people are programmed. In Cambodia we met some of the poorest people on the planet, yet when we visited our students’ families, they offered us to share even the little food they had (of course we politely declined). In our society we see a life of plenty, people who have massive homes, more cars than limbs, bottomless pit wardrobes, mega-fridges and butler’s pantries that hold enough food for a village. We see so many people who have ‘made it’ and will never go without, yet they hold on to their scarcity mindset instead of sharing their blessings. Be generous with your resources, be generous with your being.
5. Life is a journey and when we’re done, our legacy continues – so make it a good one!! As leaders, the people we are impacting will continue to pay it forward, in their own lives and in the lives of those they touch – their families, friends, colleagues and society at large. Leaders have the opportunity of creating and leaving far-reaching impact; leadership is a responsibility and a privilege, and we must never forget that.

CRST is based on the three pillars of Education, Empowerment and Inspiration and we teach our students that as Cambodia’s future leaders, it’s their responsibility to use their education to help themselves and their communities. While we provide extensive mentoring to these future social leaders, they, in turn, enrich our lives with their remarkable sustainable impact as they transform their own communities, inspiring and uplifting others.

Written by Aviv Palti.
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