Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

My name is Dong. I live in a family with 4 people include me. I am a student in Year 3 at the University of South East Asia, Siem Reap. I study in the morning at University and by myself in the afternoon. Right now, I don’t have work and I temporary stopped working since May 2019. Due to I work very hard with the team to get the good result in the Moot Court training and as well as my finally exam in Year 2 semester 2. Now I study very hard for preparing myself to join court clerk exam soon.

What do you study and why?

I am studying in Law. Because, I have to help myself first – I always think that I want to know about the law and how to protect myself against the offenses. And I am a person who don’t want to do something wrong. Especially I want communicate with all the people who work in the law field.

Second, I want to work in the court or the organization especially as the administration. Or working as a court clerk. Then I will have the chance to apply what I have learned at University and provide them the good consultant and help them to solve their problems. Actually in Cambodian society right now, we have many problems as many people do not know well about the law. Therefore, this is a part of the country will not develop well.

How did you become a JWOC scholarship student?

First I came to JWOC to study general English for two terms and then I knew teachers here and when I graduated Grade 12 I got an announcement for the scholarship program for the bachelor degree at the University. Then during that time, as I have tried to build myself and experienced of volunteering in my community in another organization named Self Help Community Center. Then I apply for the scholarship to JWOC and fill the scholarship application form. During that time, I got help from my teacher. The next step is interview, I have explained what I have done as a volunteer, my family condition, why I want to study at the university and especially how can I help my community after I graduate from the university. Around a week later, I got a phone call that I selected as a JWOC scholarship student. This is really the big chance for me and my family members are very very happy of this as well.

Can you tell us more about the competition you recently won?

At my university we had a competition – the Moot Court Competition.  Actually we have 4 groups that got shortlisted from the brief test and we have to compete with each other on 25^th August. We had one group for three people that represented as defendant and other one is represented as plaintiff. Before we compete, each groups will have online coaching and we have to participate together. For my group after class at 10:30AM until 12:00PM, we meet and read our case again and again till we remember all. We had discussed and prepared about memo of the brief to protect our party. More than this, we had find out between national law such as Criminal code… and international law such as The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…We did role play together. On the other hand, we try to expect the questions that judges will ask us and how to against what the other team will present to the judge because we don’t know yet that will we be defendant or plaintiff.

We try to involve with the lecturers to get the advice and how we can do this correctly. Finally, we won the competition. We are really really happy about achievement.

Even we done this competition, next step we always study about this case again and try to discuss again what we have done, mistakes, find out lessons learned and improve more. These are really good statements from the judge. When we practice again and again we will get better and better and will be become a skilled lawyer in the near future.

What would you like to share with current and future Scholarship students?

What I want to share to the current or future scholarship students is: even they learn in other major or law. Therefore, what they have to prepare are especially English language, also the computer skills and have to prepare and buy the books that related to the major they wish to learn. One more thing, during learning at University, they have to manage the time properly. If they have a job after class they have to read book after work or review lessons, love to go to the library to study after class and especially make good relationships with friends and lectures. Friends and lecturers can teach us everything. Failing an exam is not a problem – and remember that give up failed. So we have to try again and again don’t give up. This is the good way that they can reach their correct goal.