Cambodian Development Network

10 HABITS YOU MUST QUIT TO BE HAPPY

2015-01-24T12:59:00.000+07:00

When you quit doing the wrong things, you make more room for the things that make you happy. So starting today.

1. Quit procrastinating on your goals.

Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it. Action and change are often resisted when they’re needed most. Get a hold of yourself and have discipline. Putting something off instantly makes it harder and scarier. What we don’t start today won’t be finished by tomorrow. And there’s nothing more stressful than the perpetual lingering of an unfinished task.
The secret to getting ahead is simply getting started. Starting, all by itself, is usually sufficient to build enough momentum to keep the ball rolling. So forget about the finish line and just concentrate on taking your first step. Say to yourself, “I choose to start this task with a small, imperfect step.” All those small steps will add up and you’ll actually get to see changes fairly quickly.

2. Quit blaming others and making excuses.

Stop blaming others for what you have or don’t have, or for what you feel or don’t feel. When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility and perpetuate the problem. Stop giving your power away and start taking responsibility for your life. Blaming is just another sorry excuse, and making excuses is the first step towards failure; you and only you are responsible for your life choices and decisions.

3. Quit trying to avoid change.

If nothing ever changed there would be no sunrise the next morning. Most of us are comfortable where we are even though the whole universe is constantly changing around us. Learning to accept this is vital to our happiness and general success. Because only when we change, do we grow, and begin to see a world we never knew was possible.
And don’t forget, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. So embrace it, and realize that change happens for a reason. It won’t always be easy or obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it.

4. Quit trying to control the uncontrollable.

If you try to control everything, and then worry about the things you can’t control, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of frustration and misery.
Some forces are out of your control, but you can control how you react to things. Everyone’s life has positive and negative aspects – whether you’re happy or not depends greatly on which aspects you focus on. The best thing you can do is to let go of what you can’t control, and invest your energy in the things you can – like your attitude.

5. Quit talking down to yourself.

Nothing will bring you down quicker than berating yourself. The mind is a superb instrument if used right, but when used incorrectly, it becomes very destructive. Be aware of your mental self-talk. We all talk silently to ourselves in our heads, but we aren’t always conscious of what we’re saying or how it’s affecting us.
As Henry Ford once stated, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” One of the major causes of why we fail is due to self-doubt and negative self-talk. The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful. Listen to your self-talk and replace negative thoughts with positive ones, over time you will change the trajectory of your life.

6. Quit criticizing others.

The negativity you bleed out toward others will gradually cripple your own happiness. When you truly feel comfortable with your own imperfections, you won’t feel threatened or offended by the imperfections you see in other people.
So stop worrying about the flaws you see in everyone else, and focus on yourself. Let the constant growth and improvement in your own life keep you so busy that you have no time left to criticize others.

7. Quit running from your problems and fears.

Trust me, if everyone threw their problems in a pile for you to see, you would grab yours back. Tackle your problems and fears swiftly, don’t run away from them. The best solution is to face them head on no matter how powerful they may seem.
Fears, in particularly, stop you from taking chances and making decisions. They keep you confined to just the small space where you feel completely comfortable. But your life’s story is simply the culmination of many small, unique experiences, many of which require you to stretch your comfort zone. Letting your fears and worries control you is not ‘living,’ it’s merely existing.
Bottom line: Either you own your problems and fears, or they will ultimately own you.

8. Quit living in another time and place.

Some people spend their entire lives trying to live in another time and place. They lament about what has been, what they could have done, or what might become. However, the past is gone, and the future doesn’t exist. No matter how much time we spend thinking and lamenting about either, it doesn’t change anything.
One of life’s sharpest paradoxes is that our brightest future hinges on our ability to pay attention to what we’re doing right now, today.
We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment requires active, open, intentional awareness on the present. Don’t fantasize about being on vacation while at work, and don’t worry about the work piling up on your desk when you’re on vacation. Live for now. Notice the beauty unfolding around you.

9. Quit trying to be someone you’re not.

One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love you, and you’ll love yourself more too.

10. Quit being ungrateful.

Not all the puzzle pieces of life will seem to fit together at first, but in time you’ll realize they do, perfectly. So thank the things that didn’t work out, because they just made room for the things that will. And thank the ones who walked away from you, because they just made room for the ones who won’t.
No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Source: (www.marcandangel.com)

How Successful People Stay Calm

2015-01-04T11:06:00.002+07:00

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control. TalentSmart If you follow our newsletter, you’ve read some startling research summaries that explore the havoc stress can wreak on one’s physical and mental health (such as the Yale study, which found that prolonged stress causes degeneration in the area of the brain responsible for self-control). The tricky thing about stress (and the anxiety that comes with it) is that it’s an absolutely necessary emotion. Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state. In fact, performance peaks under the heightened activation that comes with moderate levels of stress. As long as the stress isn’t prolonged, it’s harmless.

Research from the University of California, Berkeley, reveals an upside to experiencing moderate levels of stress. But it also reinforces how important it is to keep stress under control. The study, led by post-doctoral fellow Elizabeth Kirby, found that the onset of stress entices the brain into growing new cells responsible for improved memory. However, this effect is only seen when stress is intermittent. As soon as the stress continues beyond a few moments into a prolonged state, it suppresses the brain’s ability to develop new cells.

“I think intermittent stressful events are probably what keeps the brain more alert, and you perform better when you are alert,” Kirby says. For animals, intermittent stress is the bulk of what they experience, in the form of physical threats in their immediate environment. Long ago, this was also the case for humans. As the human brain evolved and increased in complexity, we’ve developed the ability to worry and perseverate on events, which creates frequent experiences of prolonged stress.
Besides increasing your risk of heart disease, depression, and obesity, stress decreases your cognitive performance. Fortunately, though, unless a lion is chasing you, the bulk of your stress is subjective and under your control. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ under stressful circumstances. This lowers their stress levels regardless of what’s happening in their environment, ensuring that the stress they experience is intermittent and not prolonged.
While I’ve run across numerous effective strategies that successful people employ when faced with stress, what follows are ten of the best. Some of these strategies may seem obvious, but the real challenge lies in recognizing when you need to use them and having the wherewithal to actually do so in spite of your stress.

They Appreciate What They Have
Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the “right” thing to do. It also improves your mood, because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy, and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

They Avoid Asking “What If?”
“What if?” statements throw fuel on the fire of stress and worry. Things can go in a million different directions, and the more time you spend worrying about the possibilities, the less time you’ll spend focusing on taking action that will calm you down and keep your stress under control. Calm people know that asking “what if? will only take them to a place they don’t want—or need—to go.

They Stay Positive
Positive thoughts help make stress intermittent by focusing your brain’s attention onto something that is completely stress-free. You have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can’t think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps you’re looking forward to an exciting event that you can focus your attention on. The point here is that you must have something positive that you’re ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative.

They Disconnect
Given the importance of keeping stress intermittent, it’s easy to see how taking regular time off the grid can help keep your stress under control. When you make yourself available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors. Forcing yourself offline and even—gulp!—turning off your phone gives your body a break from a constant source of stress. Studies have shown that something as simple as an email break can lower stress levels.

Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of work when an email that will change your train of thought and get you thinking (read: stressing) about work can drop onto your phone at any moment. If detaching yourself from work-related communication on weekday evenings is too big a challenge, then how about the weekend? Choose blocks of time where you cut the cord and go offline. You’ll be amazed at how refreshing these breaks are and how they reduce stress by putting a mental recharge into your weekly schedule. If you’re worried about the negative repercussions of taking this step, first try doing it at times when you’re unlikely to be contacted—maybe Sunday morning. As you grow more comfortable with it, and as your coworkers begin to accept the time you spend offline, gradually expand the amount of time you spend away from technology.

They Limit Their Caffeine Intake
Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight-or-flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyperaroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. The stress that caffeine creates is far from intermittent, as its long half-life ensures that it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body.

They Sleep
I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present. Stressful projects often make you feel as if you have no time to sleep, but taking the time to get a decent night’s sleep is often the one thing keeping you from getting things under control.

They Squash Negative Self-Talk
A big step in managing stress involves stopping negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you’re doing and write down what you’re thinking. Once you’ve taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity.

You can bet that your statements aren’t true any time you use words like “never,” “worst,” “ever,” etc. If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you trust and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

They Reframe Their Perspective
Stress and worry are fueled by our own skewed perception of events. It’s easy to think that unrealistic deadlines, unforgiving bosses, and out-of-control traffic are the reasons we’re so stressed all the time. You can’t control your circumstances, but you can control how you respond to them. So before you spend too much time dwelling on something, take a minute to put the situation in perspective. If you aren’t sure when you need to do this, try looking for clues that your anxiety may not be proportional to the stressor. If you’re thinking in broad, sweeping statements such as “Everything is going wrong” or “Nothing will work out,” then you need to reframe the situation. A great way to correct this unproductive thought pattern is to list the specific things that actually are going wrong or not working out. Most likely you will come up with just some things—not everything—and the scope of these stressors will look much more limited than it initially appeared.

They Breathe
The easiest way to make stress intermittent lies in something that you have to do everyday anyway: breathing. The practice of being in the moment with your breathing will begin to train your brain to focus solely on the task at hand and get the stress monkey off your back. When you’re feeling stressed, take a couple of minutes to focus on your breathing. Close the door, put away all other distractions, and just sit in a chair and breathe. The goal is to spend the entire time focused only on your breathing, which will prevent your mind from wandering. Think about how it feels to breathe in and out. This sounds simple, but it’s hard to do for more than a minute or two. It’s all right if you get sidetracked by another thought; this is sure to happen at the beginning, and you just need to bring your focus back to your breathing. If staying focused on your breathing proves to be a real struggle, try counting each breath in and out until you get to 20, and then start again from 1. Don’t worry if you lose count; you can always just start over.

This task may seem too easy or even a little silly, but you’ll be surprised by how calm you feel afterward and how much easier it is to let go of distracting thoughts that otherwise seem to have lodged permanently inside your brain.

They Use Their Support System
It’s tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To be calm and productive, you need to recognize your weaknesses and ask for help when you need it. This means tapping into your support system when a situation is challenging enough for you to feel overwhelmed. Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them, and ready to help them get the best from a difficult situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple as talking about your worries will provide an outlet for your anxiety and stress and supply you with a new perspective on the situation. Most of the time, other people can see a solution that you can’t because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation. Asking for help will mitigate your stress and strengthen your relationships with those you rely upon.

(Source: world economic forum)

Happy the 61th Anniversary of Cambodia Independence Day!

2014-11-09T10:07:00.000+07:00

Happy the 61th Anniversary of Cambodia Independence Day!
9 November 1953 - 9 November 2014.

The Smartest Ways To Invest $1,000 In Your 20s

2014-11-06T10:20:00.000+07:00

Millennials aren't known for being major financial risk-takers, as evidenced by their avoidance of credit cards
and preference for cash.

They're equally wary when it comes to investing, particularly after witnessing the perils of the stock market that have made headlines over the last few years.

For 20-somethings who are interested in playing the investment game, coming up with the money to do it is usually the hardest part.

When you're putting every penny towards student loan debt or trying to make ends meet on an underwhelming entry-level salary, coming up with even a $1,000 can be tough.

Once you've gotten the cash together, the next challenge is figuring out what to do with it. Here are some of the best ways to invest $1,000 once you're ready to make the leap.

1. Open a money market account.
Keeping your cash in a savings account is smarter than just sticking it under the mattress, but you won’t earn a ton of interest based on the current rates.

Parking that $1,000 you've been holding onto in a money market instead allows you to snag a slightly better rate while you're researching your other investment options.

While you can open a money market at your local bank branch, you may be able to squeeze out a few extra pennies in interest by going with a high-yield account online.

2. Bump up retirement contributions.
If you're just getting your feet wet as an investor, one of the easiest places to start is with your retirement plan. Funneling more money into your 401(k) or opening an IRA is a fairly no-fuss way to put your investment seed money to work. Adding an extra $1,000 to your annual contributions each year may not seem like much but the result is a larger nest egg down the road.

For example, say you defer $10,000 of your income into your 401(k) each year. After 25 years, those contributions would be worth right around $500,000, assuming a 5% rate of return. Now, if you were to bump up your deferral to $11,000, you'd see the value of those contributions grow to approximately $551,000. When you consider that it breaks down to roughly $3 a day extra that you're chipping in, it adds up to a pretty decent payoff.
3. Buy fractional shares.

Purchasing individual stocks can quickly eat into the money you've set aside to invest, but opting for fractional shares allows you to get the most out of every dollar. You can use your $1,000 to open an account through a platform like ShareBuilder and choose from a variety of investments, including stocks and mutual funds.

Scheduling regular deposits to your account, either on a weekly or monthly basis, gives you an opportunity to purchase additional shares without requiring a substantial amount of money. Throwing in another $25 or $50 a month shouldn't be too taxing on your budget and it's a relatively no-hassle way to grow your portfolio.

4. Do your homework on mutual funds.
Picking the right stocks is a challenge even when you're a seasoned investor, and for the average 20-something, it may seem downright impossible. Mutual funds, on the other hand, take a lot of the guesswork out of the process but you'll still need to do some research to find the right one. Morningstar is one of the best places to start if you're looking for an in-depth breakdown of a fund's performance. Scottrade is another good source of information.

When you're comparing different mutual funds, it's important to consider other things besides the annual return. Some of things you'll want to pay attention to include the level of risk you'd be taking on if you decided to invest $1,000 in a particular fund, the size of the fund, and the different fees that go along with it. Since you're only working with a small amount of cash to start, you want to make sure that a big chunk of it isn't being eaten up by sales commissions or maintenance fees.

5. Knock out high-interest debt.
If you're mired in credit card debt, throwing an extra grand at the balance can make a nice dent in what you owe. Not only that, but you'll be saving yourself some money on the interest. Comparing the amount of interest you’re paying to kind of returns you might expect will give you a better idea of which is the better investment.

For instance, if you've got a $5,000 balance at 18% and you pay $250 a month, it'll take you two years to clear the debt and cost you almost $1,000 in interest. Bringing the balance down to $4,000 in one go shaves five months off the repayment time and cuts the interest down by about $400. When you consider that it would take you five years at a 7% annual return to make $400 on a $1,000 investment, it's easy to see which one offers the most immediate results.

6. Invest in yourself.
Deciding to invest $1,000 in yourself may feel a little selfish, but you shouldn't be too quick to dismiss the idea. Using the money to start a side business, build a potentially profitable website, learn a new skill, or take a class that could advance your career or may allow you to reap some big rewards down the road.

While there's still a certain degree of risk involved, you have the advantage by knowing what your goals are and what you need to do to maximize the odds of success.

(Source: Business Insider)

15 Free Online Learning Sites Every Entrepreneur Should Visit

2014-11-04T08:26:00.000+07:00

Being a successful entrepreneur means you have to wear a lot of hats, especially when your company is just starting out and you don’t have enough employees to cover all the areas you need.

Learning the new skills necessary to start a new business can be expensive, but fortunately the initiative for free, high-quality, educational resources online has only continued to grow in the past few years. Below are some of the resources available to learn more about marketing, entrepreneurship, business management and more.

1. CodeAcademy
This great resource offers free interactive programming sessions to help you learn programming languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. You can save your progress as you go with a free account. Learning to code can help entrepreneurs fix bugs if they don’t have a developer, or even go down the road of building their own website or products (such as apps).

2. HubSpot Academy
The free certification program offers courses on inbound marketing, including website optimization, landing pages and lead nurturing. These skills are a must for business owners as they try to grow their business and online presence.

3. Moz
If you want to learn search-engine optimization to make sure your website is as visible as possible, check out this treasure trove of resources from SEO leader, Moz. Besides having the free Moz Academy, there are also webinars (live and recorded), and beginner’s guides to SEO, social media and link building.

4. LearnVest
The most successful entrepreneurs know how to manage their money both on a business and personal side. In addition to having extremely affordable finance classes, LearnVest also offers some of its classes for free, such as “Building Better Money Habits” and “How to Budget.”

5. Niche consultant courses
The Internet has made for a coaching boom, which is extremely helpful to entrepreneurs who want to learn how to start or better a business in a specific niche. Some great coaches and organizations that routinely have free courses and ebooks on building a business include Natalie MacNeil and MyOwnBusiness. Try searching “niche keyword” + “business course” to find one most applicable to you.

6. edX
This free site currently has over 300 courses on a variety of topics, including “Financial Analysis and Decision Making” and “Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer?” These courses not only cover business in general, but can also you help learn more skills that are applicable to your industry, such as big data or environmental conservation.

7. Khan Academy
This free learning resource was created to give everyone access to education in math, science, art, technology and more. There are over 100,000 interactive exercises to put your education to practical use. Even though many of the courses are geared toward high school students, there are several courses that would be good for anyone to have a refresher on, such as taxes and accounting.

8. MIT Open Courseware
These are actual courses taught at MIT and offered for free on the site for viewing and reading at your discretion. The school put together an entrepreneurship page that lists available courses that are beneficial to new business owners. Courses include “Early State Capital” and “The Software Business.”

9. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
This university has almost 100 free on-demand college courses that are extremely applicable to entrepreneurs, including ones that cover business planning, operations and management and small-business tax.

10. Coursera
Much like MIT’s Open Courseware, this site has 114 educational partners that provide free courses to almost 10 million users. One benefit to Coursera is that there are very specific courses that fit perfectly into particular niches, such as “Data Management for Clinical Research” from Vanderbilt University and “Innovation for Entrepreneurs: From Idea to Marketplace” from the University of Maryland. Its wide network of partners allows for a greater selection.

11. OpenCulture
This site isn’t an educational platform on its own, but rather collects and shares free resources from around the web. Its list of 150 free online business courses is a great resource because it offers classes from iTunes U and other lessons on video and audio. The site also has lists of free audiobooks, certificate courses and other online courses.

12. YouTube
It’s probably unsurprising to most users that YouTube is one of the world’s largest search engines, as there are literally videos on just about anything you can imagine. From TED talks to recorded presentations on building a business, it’s a great free resource on just about any topic.

13. Alison
This platform offers free online courses from some of the most well-known names on the internet today, including Google, Microsoft, and Macmillan. With over 4 million users and over 600 courses already, it covers topics such as economic literacy, personal development and business/enterprise skills.

14. Saylor
The Saylor Foundation offers tuition-free courses and also works with accredited colleges and universities to offer affordable credentials. Its course offerings are similar to what you’d see when working toward a bachelor’s degree.

15. Podcasts
Even though it’s not an official course, podcasts are an amazing (and easily digestible) way to become a better entrepreneur. Podcasts can be listened to via streaming on your computer (if that certain podcast offers it) or via iTunes for iOS and apps such as Podcast Republic for Android. Podcasts such as Entrepreneur of Fire already garner thousands of listeners every episode and are a great way to learn the most up-to-date information and strategies possible. Another good list of entrepreneur podcasts include Think Entrepreneurship's.

Whether you learn best by audio, video or text, this list of 15 learning resources for entrepreneurs can help you learn more about building a business, accounting and getting customers.

(Source: Entrepreneur)

21 Ways to Achieve Wealth and Success

2014-10-21T12:44:00.000+07:00

In his book, Rich Habits -- The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, Tom Corley outlines several habits that distinguish the wealthy from the nonwealthy.

It got me to think, How many people operate on autopilot and don’t stop to monitor their everyday patterns? Below I've summarized 19 of his habits for success (nine culled from his book and the next 10 from his recent article in Success) plus two of my own. If you're not actively engaged in these 21 things, you are, in effect, leaving money on the table.

1. Setting good daily habits.
Good habits are the foundation of wealth building. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people lies in their daily habits. Simply put, successful people have many good habits and few bad ones. If you understand that your bad habits may be preventing you from becoming wealthy, that realization will be the first step in your improving your circumstances.
In his book, Corley invites you to take out a sheet of paper and list your bad habits in one column and then invert each one to place under a new column for good habits. It should look like this:

Bad Habit/Good Habit
I watch too much TV. I limit myself to one hour of TV per day.
I don’t remember names. I write down names and remember them.
Then for 30 days, follow the guidance of your new good habits list. You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

2. Regularly creating goals.
Successful people are goal driven. They create goals all the time. They plan their day the night before with to-do lists.
People who are headed for success think for the long term. They have daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. But what’s a goal without a plan to reach them? So not only do successful people have goals, they also come up with ways to achieve them and hold themselves accountable.

3. Engaging in self-improvement daily.
Successful people are always looking for ways to improve themselves. They read every day and are students of their profession. They don’t spend their time on activities that don't bring them closer to their goals.
I recently attended an event hosted by author Brendon Burchard, who said he consistently blocks out time to create. Successful people like Burchard know that time is too valuable a commodity to waste. They spend their time on the things that will move the needle for them in their business: Being committed to self-improvement means you engage in activities every day that will stretch you.
Seek ways to expand your knowledge. This won’t always be easy, but people grow from things that pose a challenge. Once your knowledge grows, opportunities appear.

4. Regularly taking care of personal health.
Each and every day successful people make an effort to eat right and exercise. Eating right is of utmost importance. Exercising daily can become a regular habit, just like taking a bath. People who exercise routinely have more energy to get things done. How are you doing in this area?

5. Often making time for relationship building.
People who are successful are other-people focused. They take time out of their day to strengthen the bonds of friendship and form long-lasting relationships with others. Networking is something they do all the time. They reach out to their contacts and look for ways to help them with no expectation of in return.
The most beautiful sound on Earth, I once heard someone say, is your name. So make it a goal to learn the names of every contact you meet. Aren’t you impressed when someone remembers your name? I know I am. So stand out as different and start remembering names.

6. Doing things in moderation.
You live in a balanced way if you do activities in moderation. This means having a balanced approach to work, eating, exercise, consuming alcohol, watching television, surfing the Internet and so forth. As a result, people will enjoy your company. If people like being around you, then you will be more apt to collaborate or find the new business partner that you need to take your business to the next level.

7. Getting things done.
Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today: Accomplish things. All people have fears, but successful people push past them. They don't procrastinate. They get the important things done, no matter the cost.
In Rich Habits, Corley explains that when the thought of putting off something enters the mind, immediately shed notion by saying, “Do it now.” He says repeat these words 100 times if necessary. Just don’t stop till the task is done.

8. Keeping a positive outlook.
Consider the most successful person you know. Is that person positive or negative? Most likely this individual is positive, enthusiastic, energetic and happy. This person chooses to see the good in others and in himself or herself. To this person, problems are just opportunities waiting to be uncovered.
Every day people are bombarded by news of bad deeds and doings. Successful people minimize their exposure to this type of thing and instead opt to fill their minds with positive ideas from books and magazines.

9. Regularly saving money.
According to Corley, successful individuals put away about 10 percent to 20 percent of their gross earnings in a savings, investment or retirement plan. Not everyone can afford to do so, but what percent are you putting away?

10. Rejecting self-limiting thoughts.
Successful people command their thoughts and emotions. As soon as bad thoughts intrude, they cast out anything that challenges their ability to succeed at the task at hand. They do not dwell on negative notions. Their self-talk is positive and not overly critical. They replace bad thoughts with good ones.
Because successful people engage in self-improvement daily and are constantly involved in positive things, they don’t allow themselves time to indulge in negative emotions.

11. Living within means.
Wealthy people avoid overspending. Among many of those struggling financially, some are living above their means. They spend more than they earn, live from paycheck to paycheck and are drowning in credit-card debt. If this is you, resolve today to turn things around for you and your family.

12. Reading daily.
Many successful people read 30 minutes or more every day. Reading can increase your knowledge and know-how. When you read, often you are seeking to improve yourself. This automatically sets you apart from your counterparts. You will stand out from the competition.

13. Limiting TV watching.
Did you know that many successful people limit the amount their TV time to one hour or less a day? How much time do you lose in front of the television that you could be spending doing something more productive?

14. Doing more than what’s required.
Successful people regularly go above and beyond the call of duty at work. Even if something is not in their job description, they will volunteer to do it. Wealthy people make themselves invaluable. As an entrepreneur, you may not have a boss. But in what ways do you go above and beyond for your clients? How do you wow them?

15. Talking less and listening more.
When you listen, you learn. And as the adage goes, that’s why people have two ears and one mouth. When you take the time to really pay attention to what another person is saying, it can truly help not only you but your bottom line as well. When you listen, you are in a better position to help others.

16. Not giving up.
Don't give up when the going gets tough. Successful people hang in there. They pivot. They try something new. They persist. They may have to change their direction, but they keep moving forward.

17. Spending time with like-minded ones.
There's a saying that goes, “Show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are.” I believe that. People are only as successful as those they choose to surround themselves with. Good associations can help you more quickly achieve your goals.

18. Finding a mentor.
Many people who have had a mentor have attributed their success to that person. Mentors can help you achieve your goals faster and keep you accountable. They can share valuable experience that can cut your learning time in half.

19. Knowing your why.
When you know why you're doing something, you will get what you what quicker than if you don’t. Having a purpose is essential to being successful in business and in life. Why do you want to be successful? Why do you really want to be wealthy?

20. Not giving fear the upper hand.
Everyone has fears. Successful people don’t allow their fears to limit or define them. Fear inevitably keeps you in the same position and stunts your growth. Recognize your fears and seek ways to overcome them. Interview someone you admire and ask that person how he or she overcame a fear or pick up an autobiography and take notes.

21. Upgrading skills.
If you want to get ahead, there’s only one way to do it: Become better at something than you are today. What's the one thing you can focus on for the next 30 days that will catapult you to rock-star status in your industry? Focus your attention on that. I heard John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire define "FOCUS" like this: Follow one course until success. Will you?

(Source: entrepreneur)

Commemoration Day of HRM King Norodom Sihanouk

2014-10-15T22:23:00.000+07:00

Photo credit: Mr. Rith at the Royal Embassy of Cambodia
to Brunei Darussalam

Bandar Seri Begawan, 15 October 2014: Again, our nation and people are currently of greatest sadness for the loss of our beloved King Father Norodom Sihanouk who passed away on 15 October 2012.

In 2012, millions of Cambodian people sadly joined His Majesty's procession ceremony from the airport to the Royal Palace to respectfully pay tributes to our King Father with a heavy heart, heartfelt love and respect, and with deepest sadness in the country as a whole. This has shown a truly emotional unity from our people from different provinces and places in our country including the monks, the old and the young who held mourning ceremony for our beloved King Father.

Today, I respectfully join the Commemoration Day of HRM King Norodom Sihanouk at the Royal Embassy of Cambodia to Brunei Darussalam with a heavy heart, heartfelt love and respect. Again, I would like to sincerely express my deepest and heartfelt condolences to our King Father Norodom Sihanouk.

His Majesty's great success and achievements have led our country into peace, unity, and prosperity over the past decades till present. His Majesty's glorious achievements and honor will never be forgotten and always be in our sincere heart. May our King Father's soul rest in eternal peace. His Majesty King Father is always in the heart of Cambodian people forever.

Please kindly accept my deepest condolences, sincere love and respect on this occasion.

Brunei Darussalam, 15 October 2014

Yours Sincerely,
Bong Angkeara

19 hard things you need to do to be successful

2014-09-20T10:05:00.000+07:00

The simple truth about how ordinary people accomplish outrageous feats of success is that they do the hard things that smarter, wealthier, more qualified people don’t have the courage or desperation to do. Do the hard things. You might be surprised at how amazing you really are.

You have to do the hard things.

You have to make the call you’re afraid to make.

You have to get up earlier than you want to get up.

You have to give more than you get in return right away.

You have to care more about others than they care about you.

You have to fight when you are already injured, bloody, and sore.

You have to feel unsure and insecure when playing it safe seems smarter.

You have to lead when no one else is following you yet.

You have to invest in yourself even though no one else is.

You have to look like a fool while you’re looking for answers you don’t have.

You have to grind out the details when it’s easier to shrug them off.

You have to deliver results when making excuses is an option.

You have to search for your own explanations even when you’re told to accept the “facts.”

You have to make mistakes and look like an idiot.

You have to try and fail and try again.

You have to run faster even though you’re out of breath.

You have to be kind to people who have been cruel to you.

You have to meet deadlines that are unreasonable and deliver results that are unparalleled.

You have to be accountable for your actions even when things go wrong.

You have to keep moving towards where you want to be no matter what’s in front of you.

You have to do the hard things. The things that no one else is doing. The things that scare you. The things that make you wonder how much longer you can hold on. Those are the things that define you. Those are the things that make the difference between living a life of mediocrity or outrageous success. The hard things are the easiest things to avoid. To excuse away. To pretend like they don’t apply to you.

(Source: Business Insider)

Five morning rituals to keep you productive all day long

2014-09-16T08:54:00.000+07:00

Most of us work long hours: 40, 50 or even 60 hours each week. But chances are, given distractions like online entertainment, office snacking habits and ill-designed time management, we're only churning out high-quality work a portion of each day.
Here are five practical steps to incorporate into any morning routine to optimize your time at the office and maintain productivity all day long:

7 minutes of exercise.
Why? It's short enough that it won't impact the rest of your morning routine and long enough to shake off any residual sluggishness from the night before -- including that extra glass of wine. There are endless fitness routines to turn to, but the one I like best is called the 7 Minute Workout (and yes, there's an app for that). In just seven minutes, it works all major muscle groups with 12 total exercises.

Start your day out green.
Sure, we've all been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and it's pretty easy to reach for a bagel, bowl of cereal, egg sandwich or cup of yogurt to get your metabolism going. While all of these options are fine choices once in a while, you'll be shocked at the morning lift you can get from a green smoothie. And healthy juicing requires less time in the morning than toasting a bagel and slathering it with low fat cream cheese. I go quick and easy, blending (for about a minute): one apple, one banana, one orange, a handful of spinach, half of a cucumber, any juice or coconut water on hand, a few cubes of ice and some flax seed. It's cheap, easy and energizing.

Pick 3 wins for the day.
While you're waiting for that smoothie to blend, get ahead of the evening's conversation with your significant other; you know, the one that starts, "How was your day?"
Decide on the three things that you'd like to accomplish in the next 12 hours in order for you to feel like the day was a success. Sure, not every day will be an epic win, but strategizing in this way will help to move the ball forward.

Block your calendar to achieve wins.
One of the most common mistakes people make at the office is not turning to-do lists into time-bound, effective project lists. I've found that people who have mastered this hack are far more likely to deliver tasks on time. It's simple: For each of the big things on your list, block off the amount of time on your calendar that you estimate the task might take; and then add 33% more time just to be sure. If a project is multi day or has dependencies, break it up into digestible chunks. Use one block to plan and a second or third block to accomplish. This simple method will help hold you accountable and immediately help you refocus on the tasks you've prioritized when you do get distracted. Too often, we let one distraction steamroll an entire morning; now you don't have to let that client email derail you from your winning plan for the day.

Power up after lunch. Take the 15 minutes right after lunch to refocus on the day; a kind of professional meditation. Get away from your computer, turn it off, go sit in a conference room and determine what you have on tap for the rest of the day. Think about how the list you set in the morning is shaping up. Are you ahead of schedule? Behind schedule? You'll find that these 15 minutes help you identify how you got derailed, what's causing you distractions and help you to rediscover a rhythm to be productive all day long.
Give this simple formula a try for a week and I think you'll be pleased with the results.

(Source: entrepreneur)

A smart investor would skip the M.B.A.

2014-08-30T11:42:00.002+07:00

Imagine that you have been accepted to Harvard Business School. The ivy-covered buildings and high-powered faculty whisper that all you need to do is listen to your teachers, get good grades and work well with your peers. After two years, you'll emerge ready to take the business world by storm. Once you have that degree, you'll have it made.

But don't kid yourself. What matters exponentially more than that M.B.A. is the set of skills and accomplishments that got you into business school in the first place. What if those same students, instead of spending two years and $174,400 at Harvard Business School, took the same amount of money and invested it in themselves? How would they compare after two years?

If you want a business education, the odds aren't with you, unfortunately, in business school. Professors are rewarded for publishing journal articles, not for being good teachers. The other students are trying to get ahead of you. The development office is already assessing you for future donations. Administrators care about the metrics that will improve your school's national ranking. None of these things actually helps you learn about business.

Consider what you could do instead with that $174,400. The first step should be to move to a part of the country that supports your interests. If that's film, move to Los Angeles. Technology, San Francisco. Oil, Houston. You could live decently in these cities for $3,000 per month. Over the course of two years, that still leaves you $100,000 to invest in yourself.

To decide how to do that, start unpacking the value of an M.B.A. Good business schools deliver two main values: educational content and a network. Acquiring the content is easy: Go online and take the classes using OpenCourseWare or Coursera. You'll get to watch the same lectures, but for free.

Finding and building a network will be more valuable to you than an M.B.A. You cannot buy a network. Your network is built on relationships with people, founded on trust. You also cannot buy trust—it's something built over time. Invest in buying coffee, drinks and dinner for people you want to get to know. This may be deeply uncomfortable, and that's good. It means that building relationships will be easier in the future. Ask people how they got to their current job, what resources they recommend, and what books they think you should read.

Building an army of people who trust you and think you're talented will be invaluable when you look for jobs. Consider investing in hard skills such as programming. Dev Bootcamp, a 10-week training course in programming, costs only $12,200. It takes people with no experience and teaches them how to code. In 2012, 88% of its graduates got job offers at an average starting salary of $79,000. Those outcomes are far better than for students fresh out of M.B.A. programs. According to Payscale.com, the average starting salary for M.B.A. graduates with less than one year of experience was $46,630 in 2012. Dev Bootcamp offers a much better return on investment.

If you aren't accepted to Harvard, the argument against going to business school becomes even stronger. At least with their Harvard M.B.A.s, less than 5% of the class of 2012 was unemployed three months after graduating. But at the University of Southern California, 23% of 2012 M.B.A. grads were still unemployed three months after graduation. And that's at USC, a fairly well-known school. The return on investment of going to Harvard or another top-10 business school has remained relatively high, but the return on going to lesser schools is very questionable.

The prospect of forgoing business school in favor of real-world accomplishments is scary for many new college graduates. Youth employment is the lowest since the 1950s, and for the first time more unemployed people have college experience than not. Competition for new jobs is fierce, with 50% of the world's population under 30. When you are competing against 3.5 billion people, it pays to be different. But getting another university degree doesn't make you different.

Instead of relying on business school to succeed, deliberately practice the skills necessary to become a master in your chosen field. Build a network that supports your professional aspirations. Work on projects that show you can have an impact in the real world, dealing with practical problems.

Most of all, put yourself in the shoes of your future boss and imagine whom you would rather hire: the candidate who built a profitable business over the course of two years, or the candidate who sat in lectures and reviewed case studies to get a degree?

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

How to Become a Millionaire by Age 30

2014-07-07T14:54:00.000+07:00

Getting rich and becoming a millionaire is a taboo topic. Saying it can be done by the age of 30 seems like a fantasy. It shouldn’t be taboo and it is possible. At the age of 21, I got out of college, broke and in debt, and by the time I was 30, I was a millionaire.

Here are the 10 steps that will guarantee you will become a millionaire by 30.

1. Follow the money. In today’s economic environment you cannot save your way to millionaire status. The first step is to focus on increasing your income in increments and repeating that. My income was $3,000 a month and nine years later it was $20,000 a month. Start following the money and it will force you to control revenue and see opportunities.

2. Don’t show off -- show up! I didn’t buy my first luxury watch or car until my businesses and investments were producing multiple secure flows of income. I was still driving a Toyota Camry when I had become a millionaire. Be known for your work ethic, not the trinkets that you buy.

3. Save to invest, don’t save to save. The only reason to save money is to invest it. Put your saved money into secured, sacred (untouchable) accounts. Never use these accounts for anything, not even an emergency. This will force you to continue to follow step one (increase income). To this day, at least twice a year, I am broke because I always invest my surpluses into ventures I cannot access.

4. Avoid debt that doesn’t pay you. Make it a rule that you never use debt that won’t make you money. I borrowed money for a car only because I knew it could increase my income. Rich people use debt to leverage investments and grow cash flows. Poor people use debt to buy things that make rich people richer.

5. Treat money like a jealous lover. Millions wish for financial freedom, but only those that make it a priority have millions. To get rich and stay rich you will have to make it a priority. Money is like a jealous lover. Ignore it and it will ignore you, or worse, it will leave you for someone who makes it a priority.

6. Money doesn’t sleep. Money doesn’t know about clocks, schedules or holidays, and you shouldn’t either. Money loves people that have a great work ethic. When I was 26 years old, I was in retail and the store I worked at closed at 7 p.m. Most times you could find me there at 11 p.m. making an extra sale. Never try to be the smartest or luckiest person -- just make sure you outwork everyone.

7. Poor makes no sense. I have been poor, and it sucks. I have had just enough and that sucks almost as bad. Eliminate any and all ideas that being poor is somehow OK. Bill Gates has said, "If you’re born poor, it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor, it is your mistake."

8. Get a millionaire mentor. Most of us were brought up middle class or poor and then hold ourselves to the limits and ideas of that group. I have been studying millionaires to duplicate what they did. Get your own personal millionaire mentor and study them. Most rich people are extremely generous with their knowledge and their resources.

9. Get your money to do the heavy lifting. Investing is the Holy Grail in becoming a millionaire and you should make more money off your investments than your work. If you don’t have surplus money you won’t make investments. The second company I started required a $50,000 investment. That company has paid me back that $50,000 every month for the last 10 years. My third investment was in real estate, where I started with $350,000, a large part of my net worth at the time. I still own that property today and it continues to provide me with income. Investing is the only reason to do the other steps, and your money must work for you and do your heavy lifting.

10. Shoot for $10 million, not $1 million. The single biggest financial mistake I’ve made was not thinking big enough. I encourage you to go for more than a million. There is no shortage of money on this planet, only a shortage of people thinking big enough.

Apply these 10 steps and they will make you rich. Steer clear of people that suggest your financial dreams are born of greed. Avoid get-rich-quick schemes, be ethical, never give up, and once you make it, be willing to help others get there too.

(Source: entrepreneur.com)

How to keep track of your good ideas everyday.

2014-06-25T09:40:00.000+07:00

You have good ideas. Don't let them disappear.

Good ideas come and go every second, but what doesn’t happen very often is the capturing of those thoughts. You can have the brightest and sharpest ideas that could take your life and business to a whole new level, but they mean absolutely nothing if they're pushed aside and forgotten.

It doesn’t matter what our education levels are or where we come from, we all have great and wonderful ideas. The only problem is that most people let the hustle and bustle of life get in the way and interrupt their ability to capture their golden ideas.
Now, you might not come up with the world’s next greatest invention (or maybe you will). But everything we use in our day-to-day lives was once just an idea. Not every idea will be worth a billion dollars, but perhaps one or two of them can change the trajectory of your business and life for the better.
We all have 24 hours in a day, no more or no less than the next person. Think about how many times where an idea or thought comes to mind but you do nothing about it. There really is no value for us if we don’t take the initiative. The other reason why it is so imperative that we capture our ideas is because coincidence or not, some of our best ideas don't come to us in the office.

Here are three steps to take every day:

Have a system. The best way I have found to capture ideas on a regular basis is to take a systematic approach to it. We all prefer different ways of doing things. Some of us prefer electronic devices while some of us stick to the trusted pen-and-paper route.
Either way, pick what works for you and stick with it. I prefer to log all of my ideas and thoughts into evernote and then at the end of the day analyze each idea. After I dig a little deeper, I transfer the ideas that I may want to act on immediately or in the near future into my moleskin journal.

Pick the good ones. Just because you start capturing your thoughts and ideas doesn’t mean everything that comes to mind is going to be something that you will act on. Finding time alone where you can analyze what you logged for the day helps tremendously. This is where you can determine whether a specific idea is worthy of your time. Throw out what’s useless.

Make it a habit. Just like with any new habit that we try to adopt into our everyday lives, it takes time. I truly believe that if you make a determined effort on a regular basis to capture your ideas, it will greatly benefit your personal and professional life.
Of all the great men and women I have had the fortune to work with, they all knew the importance of keeping track of their thoughts and ideas. Stick with it.

(Source: Entrepreneur)

What rich people have next to their beds

2014-06-20T10:48:00.002+07:00

You know what you'll probably find on a successful (read: rich) person's nightstand?

Books. But not just any books, according to Tom Corley, the author of "Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits Of Wealthy Individuals." His research finds that rich and poor people alike are cracking their fair share of spines, but the key difference is that less financially successful people read for entertainment, while rich people read for self-improvement.

Note that Corley defines "rich people" as having an annual income of $160,000 or more and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million-plus, and "poor people" as those having an annual income of $35,000 or less and a liquid net worth of $5,000 or less.

Here's how the numbers break down:

11% of rich people read for entertainment, compared to 79% of poor
85% of rich people read two or more education, career-related, or self-improvement books per month, compared to 15% of poor
94% of rich people read news publications including newspapers and blogs, compared to 11% of poor people

"The overall conclusion that I reached in my research is that your daily habits will dictate your financial success in life, and there are four or five key ones," says Corley. One of those keys, he explains, is self-education. "The rich are voracious readers on how to improve themselves. They're reading self-improvement books, biographies, books about successful people, things like that."

In fact, Corley found that educational reading overlapped with another factor of success: mentorship. After being asked in an interview about his finding that only 24% of the wealthy people he studied had mentors, he went back over the research and found that 93% of those with mentors agreed with the statement, "My mentor was responsible for my wealth."

"The reason why the wealthy people without mentors said they didn't have one was that they got their education through reading books, and through the school of hard knocks," Corley says. Over half of those people were business owners who effectually mentored themselves, through books and experience.
To that end, Corley has included books as one of his five kinds of mentors, which also include parents, teachers, work colleagues, and the "school of hard knocks."

(Source: Business Insider)

Scholarship: Master of Public Policy and Management at UBD

2014-06-06T09:22:00.001+07:00

MASTER SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITY:

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) offers an internationally-focused cross-disciplinary Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM), which is characterised by its focus on nurturing excellence in both policy skills and management qualities. The Programme also emphasises on analytical writing, quantitative and verbal reasoning skills.

IPS is inviting applications from East Asia Summit participating countries to join their MPPM which the second cohort will begin on 27th December 2014. The closing date for the MPPM applications is 17th July 2014.

International Focus

The MPPM is an 18-month programme which the students will spend 12 months in UBD and the third semester in one of the partner policy schools in the United States. They are:

-McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University
-Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
-School of Public Policy, University of Maryland
-Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

In the third semester, students will also be having a two-week study visit to Washington, D.C., meeting people from key policymaking institutions including the House of Congress, policy think-tanks and non-profit sectors.

The MPPM has three specialisation tracks:

* Islamic Governance and Islamic International Relations
* Energy Policy and Management
* Environmental Policy and Management

Advisor Profile

Professor John W. Thomas, Professor of Harvard Kennedy School of Government - Harvard University has been appointed as the Advisor and Eminent Visiting Professor to IPS and MPPM. His vast experience includes establishing the Public Policy Programme at the National University of Singapore, now the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and counselling Asian, African, and Latin American universities on the development of public policy programmes.

Who Should Apply

- High performing employees in the public and private sector with at least 5 years of relevant work experience with high leadership potential
- Those from the international development agencies and non-profit sectors who are contributing in a significant way to the field of sustainable international development
- Outstanding international participants with at least 5 years of relevant work experience with leadership capabilities

Entry Requirements

a) Normally an Upper Second Class Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant discipline from a university recognised by the Senate of UBD with at least 5 years relevant work experience.
b) a minimum English qualification of GCE ‘O’ Level Credit 6 or IELTS 6.0 or TOEFL 550 is required.
c) Also, a minimum Mathematics qualification of GCE ‘O’ Level Credit 6 or one “pass” in a subsequent level mathematics subject is essential.

If you require further information, please do not hesitate to e-mail the Institute of Policy Studies at:

office.ips@ubd.edu.bn, office.ips@ubd.edu.bn or norfarahiyah.tuah@ubd.edu.bn, norfarahiyah.tuah@ubd.edu.bn
Source: http://www.ubd.edu.bn/faculties-and-institutes/ips/

How to Raise Money for Your Business

2014-05-28T08:59:00.004+07:00

Whether you've been in business one week or five years, an infusion of funds is always welcome. But what type of financing is best for your business? There are so many factors to consider--from the stage of your business to how much it'll cost to get the money--that just choosing a path to follow can be overwhelming.

To help you get your head around the different ways you can finance the growth of your business, we've compiled mini-guides that cover the basic information on many different financing sources. Read through our guides to learn the basics, and then start hunting!

So you've come up with an idea for a business? Congratulations! Now you need startup financing - that initial infusion of money needed to turn the idea into something tangible. And that's where it becomes tricky.
When you are just starting out, you're not at the point yet where a traditional lender or investor would be interested in you. So that leaves you with selling cherished assets, borrowing against your home, maxing out credit cards, dipping into a 401(k), and asking loved ones for loans. There is a lot of risk involved, including the risk of bankruptcy with your personal finances and soured relationships with friends and family.

This is the hard part behind starting a business -- putting so much at risk. But doing so is the rite of passage to both success and failure. It's what sets entrepreneurs apart from people who collect paychecks.
A major key is to ramp up initial operations as quickly as possible to get to the point where outside investors can see and feel the venture, as well as understand that you took some risk getting it to that point.
Some businesses can also be bootstrapped. They can be built up quickly enough to make money without aid from investors who might otherwise come in and start calling the shots.

With so much at risk, it is important to have a strong business plan in place, and to seek out advice from experienced entrepreneurs and experts -- people who might also invest in your business someday.
Seek out local entrepreneurship advice programs. One place to start looking is the SBA's website, which has a search engine for finding local Small Business Development Centers, SCORE chapters and other resources
What's Next: Once you get over the initial hump, it is possible to seek out funding sources available to more advanced startups and early stage companies.

(Source: entrepreneur.com)

4 Factors to Making the Best Decisions for You

2014-05-26T08:35:00.001+07:00

When we’re just starting out, we’re thirsty for advice. How else can we be sure we’re making the right decisions? It’s in our best interest to seek out advice -- lots of it. But there comes a time when you have to start relying on yourself for guidance. The problem is, there will always be another book you could benefit from reading. There will always be another helpful article online for you to discover. There will always be another person you could reach out to.

You may find that you’re relying on the same source to help make your decisions for you. Early on in my career, I developed products for many different industries. When it came to marketing, I consulted my wife, who has a marketing degree from Northwestern University and an undergraduate degree from Stanford. She had worked at numerous consumer-product companies and became vice president of marketing at E. & J. Gallo Winery. All of which is to say -- she had much more experience than I did.

Whenever I struggled to make a marketing decision, I’d ask her for help, and then defer to her advice. She was my crutch. I was leaning on her too much. It was easy to blame her when, in reality, the buck stopped with me. I needed to have total confidence in my own decision-making ability to move forward. I realized that I had to make my own decisions. So I did. And, to my delight, my decisions were good ones! As a result, I grew not only as an entrepreneur, but as a person.

For those that are paralyzed with fear and desperately seeking someone to lean on, listen up. At some point -- sooner than later -- you’re going to have to start making your own decisions as an entrepreneur. Here’s how to make the best ones:

1. Read as much as you can, and then stop reading. I’ve met many entrepreneurs who use books as a crutch. They’re always looking for the next book to read. I love reading self-help books too, but there’s just so much information out there. It can easily become paralyzing. Don’t overdo it. You learn by doing.

2. Make a point of seeking out different perspectives. When we talk to the same people -- and in particular, people who are our friends or care about us -- we draw from a limited point of view. If you’re really interested in learning from others, deliberately seek out those with a different perspective. It’s easy (and boring) to listen to people that share your point of view. But you’ll make better decisions if you force yourself to think about new aspects of the same issues. No decision is ever black and white, and your thinking shouldn’t be either.

3. Be flexible. The only way to keep making good decisions as an entrepreneur is to be open-minded and easygoing. It’s a fact that something isn’t going to go according to plan. Plans change, and being an entrepreneur means being willing to take on risk. If you’re still hung up on something that went “wrong” or holding on to the belief that your original plan will work out, you may end up failing to pursue a different, exciting (and maybe even better) option for yourself and your business. You should have a game plan. But that game plan is more likely to end up looking like a zigzag than a straight line.

4. Own your decisions. They are yours and yours alone. If something goes wrong, don’t blame anyone but yourself. How can you learn from the experience if you abdicate responsibility?
Part of what I enjoy about being an entrepreneur is the fact that I get to make my own decisions. At the end of the day, whether they’re good or bad, they’re all mine. If you’re like me, that reality is frightening, wonderful and totally rewarding.

(Source: entrepreneur.com)

Want to be an Entrepreneurial Icon? Try these 5 steps.

2014-05-25T23:19:00.000+07:00

If you want to grow your brand and establish yourself as an icon in your field, you’re going to have to get to work. Look at successful entrepreneurs such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Ali Brown and Pat Flynn. These are just a few examples of ordinary people who have achieved extraordinary results through hard work and bootstrapping.

While money and an ultra-successful product can help catapult you to fame, the truth is you can do it on your own from the ground up. I discusseded keys to establishing yourself as an expert back in 2011 based on the book I co-authored, Small Business, Big Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right. While these steps are still essential, here are some other new ideas you might want to consider to expand your reach when following these keys to icon status.

1. Start blogging and guest posting. Blogging is a great way to share your knowledge with the world. When you write quality posts with tremendous value, you’ll establish yourself as an expert and have people coming back for more. There are other ways to grow through blogging outside your own space today. With the emergence of shared-content sites such as Medium, Quora and Slideshare, you can take your blogging to a whole other level.

There are some guidelines to follow though. Make sure you write in your own voice. Writing the way you’d speak to a large audience will help you get your conversational tone of voice down, and the way you write can translate toward your overall brand. Don’t worry about making your content amazing and “giving away” your best information. In fact, worry about not giving away your best. If you hold back and don’t add real value to your content, your blog will suffer. Give your best and share your style and great content to build yourself as a entrepreneurial icon.

2. Market yourself. You have to spend some time promoting yourself if you want to become an icon in your field. That’s going to take some wisely invested money to start spreading the word. You’ll need a strategy that markets you as the expert on your business and in your field. Start with the same marketing techniques you might use for your business, including a social-media plan that establishes your credentials. Next you’ll want to spread your organic reach. Try scheduled press releases, pitching yourself for relevant stories and trying to get face time with media outlets as an expert for topical issues.
If PR sounds intimidating to try alone, then consider hiring an agency to represent you. There are new ways to connect yourself with audiences such as the popular site HARO (help a reporter out) where you can register as an expert and have journalists reach out to you for your expertise and opinions. Regardless of your approach, you’ll need to market yourself to become an icon.

3. Create compelling content. Creating great content ties in with blogging, but can go far beyond just the writing basics. A few years ago writing a nice story might have been enough. However, today we live in an economy of value exchange. If you give great value, people pay attention and will seek you out. It doesn’t have to just be great blogging content or media advice like in the past. With the emergence of more technology has come the ability to create more compelling content for less cost.
You should now consider adding videos, audio clips, informational graphics, podcasts and animated videos to your content regiment. The more you share compelling content, the more you will be establishing yourself as the leader in your field. Do it yourself or look into agency help, like that offered by Visual.ly, which will create compelling content (for a cost) for you. Don’t be afraid to get creative and give all mediums of content a go.

4. Create valuable products. Not only are products a great way for you to create supplemental or passive income, they also help to further establish yourself as an expert. One common practice is to offer something of good value for free to readers willing to subscribe to your email list. Industry standards include long-form video content, e-books, workbooks and workshop materials. Creating products from your experience that fall in line with your business is a great way to introduce yourself to these new readers.
It can be an especially valid tactic to offer some kind of low-cost product on your website if your typical products are at a high price point. By having a lower price-point product that’s highly valuable, you can ease clients and customers into your brand and your expertise gradually. If the content is truly great, they’ll be back to invest in bigger offerings and higher price-point items from you while tuning in to see what other advice you have.

5. Up-level your expertise. Once you’re established, try to up-level your experience by leveraging your expertise. There are lots of ways to achieve this. You can start consulting and use your expertise as a service. Or you can create your own mentoring programs on speaking circuits as a keynote and workshops. Another incredibly popular route today is to start your own podcast. If done right you have access to a large audience and can build loyal followers through your own personal experience and by having guests from your personal connections you've built over the years.

Excel at these keys and you could be the next big name in entrepreneurial circles.

(Source: entrepreneur.com)

Want to Be Successful? Stick to a Schedule.

2014-05-23T09:41:00.000+07:00

There will always be fellow entrepreneurs with more funding, better connections or years of experience. One thing, however, that puts us all on a level playing field: the number of hours in a day. Figuring out how to effectively spend the 24 hours in each day is one of the most challenging parts of being a business owner.
When I first started out, I thought the main perk of working on my own as a publicist would be being able to do things, according to my own schedule. I didn’t have a daily routine. My schedule would just depend on my mood.
After about a year of functioning in this way, I realized that I needed to work during more normal business hours if I really wanted to grow my company. I decided to create a schedule and I still stick to one today. Not only did this make me feel significantly less stressed, I was getting more done in fewer hours!

Heather Pierce, designer and CEO of Raya Hanan in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., says it best: “On top of the duties and pressures that come along with being a business owner, there is always people needing your immediate attention," she writes via email. "A skill that is helpful is prioritizing your tasks and keeping a list of everything that needs to get accomplished.”
If you don’t create a plan on a daily or weekly basis, becoming disorganized is easy. Even if you have all the resources in the world, not using your time wisely can cost you.

Here are some ways to set up a routine and get more done:

1. Embrace mornings, nights or weekends. Pick one of these times, when other people aren’t working, to focus on projects that require a lot of concentration. Every morning from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. is my uninterrupted time to write articles, answer emails and work on research projects.
If I tried to get these projects done in the middle of the day, it would take me twice as long because I would be constantly distracted by phone calls, emails and meetings. Those four hours in the morning are my most productive. I probably get about 75 percent of my work done then.

2. Schedule everything in one spot or organizational device. This may seem like it's taking out all the fun in life. Wrong! It makes life more fun because you aren’t constantly worrying about how to fit everything in.
It's "crucial to make sure you record all your meetings and appointments in one place instead of having them scattered throughout different calendars, notebooks, and apps," writes Alexandra Weiss, a partner at CA Creative in New York, via email. "Not only will it save time to only have to check one calendar but it will also help ensure that you are not double booking or missing any meetings.”
When I first began my public relations work, I often canceled plans with friends because projects would take longer than I expected. I didn't feel I was getting anything done. Then I started scheduling both my professional and personal commitments in one place and assigning equal importance to both. This way I can really see how much time I have for each.

3. Find a method that works for you. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all method for scheduling. Try a few different things and see what works. If your calendar or to-do list isn’t easy to use, you will never keep your schedule organized.
For example, Jamie Walker, CEO of SweatGuru and Fit Approach in San Francisco, shares via email, “I schedule EVERYTHING on my calendar and every little thing I need to do goes on Trello." About the organizational app, she says, "I love Trello because I can create a to-do list each week and access it from my phone or computer."
Adds Walker: "I can also assign my team tasks and check in to see what [different individuals] have on their plates for the week. It's such a great way to stay organized and on schedule.”
In contrast, Pierce usually creates "a long, to-do list containing everything that needs to be completed," she says. "I then mark the most urgent tasks and the things that I am able to get done later in the day and the things that need to be done during business hours. The tasks that need to get done that same day I call my SOS list.”

4. Don’t panic when things don’t go according to the plan. This is probably something I could work at. I become anxious when meetings run late, conference calls go over the budgeted time or projects take longer than anticipated. The reality is this type of thing happens on a daily basis, and you can’t get too stressed out about it. Figuring out how to deal with the unexpected is just part of being an entrepreneur.
When you have set up a structure, and the things arise at the last minute, it's a lot easier to deal with them. There is no point in worrying. That will just cut into your schedule even more.

(Source: entrepreneur.com )

Book Review: The End of Poverty

2014-05-21T11:06:00.000+07:00

Introduction

Poverty can be visualized as the receipt of real incomes too small to enable people to live at minimum standards of health, education, and welfare (Stevenson, 1960). Every second, children die from AIDS and extreme poverty and more than one billion people could not afford their living. Six million children pass away from malnutrition every year (Cozay, 2009). Poverty ⁽¹⁾is one of the major obstacles for the developing world and needed to be settled in our generation. Therefore, Sachs has made news with a plan to end extreme poverty and hence, he wrote a book entitled ‘The End of Poverty’ which focuses on how to end poverty. The Goals are to halve extreme poverty by 2015 and end it by 2025. Jaffrey Sachs is a well-known economic adviser to the governments around the world. He is the Earth Institute Director at the Columbia University and also a Special Advisor to the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). He has been to more than 100 countries to help reduce disease, poverty, environmental damage and armed conflict, and offer advice on the national economies. Sachs’s main purpose is to end poverty by 2025. He addresses certain issues which are one of the most compelling plans to alleviate poverty that economists often underestimate. He tries to show a big picture of how the whole societies emerge from poverty by explaining his work in Bolivia, India, Russia, Africa, China, and other countries integrating the set of solutions for economic, environmental, social, political problems which challenge the poorest countries. Yet, there are some strength and weakness which he made in his book. Therefore, this critical paper will discuss and analyses some of his assertion in his book on how to end of poverty. I divide this paper into three parts: first, a summary of his book relating to poverty alleviation; second, I discuss some strength and weakness and analytical aspects of some of his arguments. And finally, I summarize this analytical aspect.

Summary:

The main thrust of Sachs’s book focuses on how to end extreme poverty ⁽²⁾ in our time. He has seen extreme poverty, disease, and malnutrition around the world and particularly, while he focuses on the sub-Saharan Africa. More than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor. Sachs’s main argument is our generation could help ending to halve extreme poverty by 2015 and end it by 2025, and ensure that all of poor countries could make reliable progress up the ladder of economic development. And it can be ended not in the time of our grandchildren, but in our time. The rich world could help to escape from poverty and make it a realistic possibility by 2025.

Sachs’s book covers 18 chapters which combines his practical experience with sharp professional analysis and clear exposition on its topic. Since I make a summary of his book at this point, a brief summary of his discussion and arguments should be entailed. Sachs focuses on the ladder of economic development which helps the poorest of the poor to escape the misery of extreme poverty. Thus, they might start their own ascent up the ladder of economic development (p. 18-20). He visits some countries such as Malawi, Bangladesh, China, and India.

During his visit to these countries, he finds that more than one million African children succumb to malaria each year. Roughly 900,000 Malawians infected with the HIV virus and died of AIDS because of lack of treatment and around140 million people are living in the flood plains of the deltas of the two great rivers in Bangladesh. Sachs realizes that the problem is simply that Malawians die this day as a result of their poverty because the world has overlooked impoverished people. Their incomes are around 50 cents per person per day or around 180 dollars per person per year. Sachs also focuses on the economic growth of some nations which is necessary to develop a better understanding of the forces shaping the productivity factors. This means that once the industrial revolution was under way, the same combination of modern technologies and social organizational could spread to other parts of the world which forces an increase in the global productions (p. 38-39).

Sachs emphasizes that due to the faults of the poor such as retrograde cultures and corrupt leadership impeding its country development. However, he also indicates that there are eight major categories of problems which can cause the economy to decline such as poverty trap, physical geography, fiscal trap, governance failures, cultural barriers, geopolitics, demographic trap, and lack of innovation. He then argues that the poorest countries could get out of the poverty trap unless their main economic development objectives aim to gain a foothold on the ladder (p. 56-73). In addition, Sachs proposes a new method for economic development called clinical economy which outlines the similarities between good clinical medicine and good development economics. Sachs indicates seven parts of the diagnostic checklist of any impoverished country such as the extent of extreme poverty, economic policy, fiscal framework, physical geography and human ecology, patterns of governance, cultural barriers to economics development, and geopolitics which a clinical economics approach will point the way to a better strategy (p. 74-89).

He argues that markets are powerful engines of development when the preconditions of basic infrastructure such as roads, power, human capital, education, and health are in place. He believes that it is encumbent upon successful market economies to bring the few areas of the world that still need help onto the ladder of development.

Sachs consults with countries in crisis such as in Bolivia in the mid 1980s and goes on to work with Russia in 1992, Poland in 1989, and other countries. He discusses the practical improvements in infrastructure, education, and health to eliminate extreme poverty by 2025 ⁽³⁾. Sachs distinguishes between three degrees of poverty: first, ‘extreme poverty’, representing one sixth of the world population or one billion people, who literally fight for survival every day; second, ‘moderate poverty’, representing 1.5 billion people, who live above the subsistence level but still struggle to make ends meet; third, ‘relative poverty’, representing 2.5 billion people, mostly in urban centers, who have access to housing, transportation, some education, and some nutrition. Sachs shows that the world economy has changed considerably since 1980, with over half the world experiencing economic progress in the past 25 years. Sachs also put some criticisms to the main institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank which he believes that these organizations have tended to represent the interests of creditor banks rather than the poor and so have often exacerbated the problem of global poverty.

Analysis:

The heart of Sachs’s book focuses on how to end global poverty. He raises how to eradicate poverty from the world and proposes some solutions on why his plan should be carried out. The globe is ensnared in a poverty trap - the combination of poor infrastructure, poor health care, and poor geography renders some societies to generate economic surplus for the future. Sachs states that extreme poverty ⁽⁴⁾ could be ended by 2025 if all the rich countries adhere to their previous funding declarations and contribute .7 percent of their GDP. Sachs criticizes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bush Administration for lacking concern for the poor instead of bullying approach to the world affairs. The United States (US) said it would contribute .7% of its GDP to help the poor countries. The rich countries including the US contributed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for alleviating poverty, disease and hunger and improvement of education and the lives of children and women. I reckon Sachs’s argument might be true at some points. If all the rich countries in the world could commit to what Sachs set in the GDP, it might more or less help to eradicate poverty. There is a strong reason for the presence of government’s policy to focus on this issue but they do little to resolve the extent to which it should attempt to deal with these issues.

Sachs uses a ladder of economic development to describe extreme poverty. He explains that people who live in extreme poverty could not seize even the bottom rung of the ladder.

This means that they do not have the basic necessities to maintain life such as food, clean water, and shelter. It is impossible to pursue education without basic sustenance. For instance, Sachs raises Malawi as ‘the perfect storm’ of extreme poverty ⁽⁵⁾. Malaria epidemics and AIDS culminate into a horrific maelstrom and the world community has so far offered little help. China is also one of the technical and prosperous countries. However, at some point in history, they blocked themselves off from the rest of the world; they lost all the opportunities due to the free flow of information and relatively free trade in the rest of the world. Sachs argues that the market forces as powerful factor to help end extreme poverty. At this point, I think Sachs is right because more competitive market is seen as a necessary response to the new global economic forces (Beresford, 2000). This means that a country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time is highly dependent on its ability to raise its out put per workers and thus competitive free markets work perfectly because they distribute resources to the most productive areas of the economy which could bring about to raise the living standard of its people. For example, the combined impact of global free market between nations could open up many new opportunities for wealth creation which could also attract the foreign investment. And it would help to create more jobs or new employment opportunities for the countries. As Beresford states that a free market or trade is supposed to benefit all countries by creating opportunities to produce and trade on a larger scale than is possible in as system where trade within nation is protected from outside competition (p. 80-83). Therefore, the growth of free market or trade have resulted in a growth in competition between nations to attract and retain finance investment capital, which is the basis of growth in jobs and the uptake of new technology, contribute to the country’s development and poverty alleviation.

Based on the title of Sachs’s book and the pre-conceived notions of how this task is difficult to achieve in the near future, Sachs shows a straightforward strategy to end poverty. He indicates the differences in the levels of economic development across the various countries of the world to establish the reasons for slow or stagnant economic growth in the less developed countries which he intends to get them to reach the first rung of the ladder of economic development to eradicate extreme poverty ⁽⁶⁾ by the year 2025. He shows that the economic development is not a zero sum match. He believes that everyone could win and he refers to the vision of Keynes on the end of poverty by the twentieth century in Britain and other industrialized countries during the Great Depression. Similarly, he indicates that the developed world is of the resources to benefit from it by elaborating a strategy of collective action to show that extreme poverty could be ended in our time. I agree with Sachs that that the collective action which is supplemented by the effective government provision of education, health, foreign assistance, and infrastructure could bring about economic success.

Sachs argues that the United States should not focus more on the military option to eradicate global terrorism than on the option of economic development which instead undermines some of the fundamental factors that breed terrorism. Sachs argues if the rich countries offer 0.7 percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) to the poor countries as targeted, the extreme poverty could be eliminated as planned.

However, the United States currently offers only 0.15 percent of its Gross National Product in aid which is far below all other wealthy countries. I argue that in order to end extreme poverty, it is beneficial that all the industrialized countries around the world need to commit its commitments and help to contribute their aid to the poor countries as set in the Millennium Development Goal which aim to half extreme poverty by 2015 and end it by 2025. According to Kennedy, there are elements of choice in the process of adjusting to these challenges, but relatively few countries are well prepared to commit it given to their political and economic circumstances (p. 20-21).

Sachs has lots of experience in development and worked many countries in world. He details how he has applied his clinical economics around the world and emphasizes a clinical diagnosis of what each nation actually needs to eradicate extreme poverty. He thinks that the United Nations could carry out the assessments and to coordinate aid. However, Sachs finds that the United Nations is reluctant to invest in the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Sachs claims that a 5 percent income tax on incomes over 200,000 dollars will suffice to bring the US foreign direct assistance up to the level needed to support the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. This means that if all the rich countries could contribute 0.7 percent of its Gross National Product to alleviate the global poverty, he is confident that we could end of the extreme poverty by 2025. I think it is beneficial that he uses it as a system approach to consider all aspects such as poverty, fiscal policy, geography, governance, culture, geopolitics, innovation, and demographics which enhance to contribute to end poverty.

Sachs also argues that extreme poverty could be ended with investment of capital by the developed world. The ending deep poverty was not only a moral necessity for the developed world but it works to their positive good. I think his central point is that poverty has specific causes which some of relevant problems involved such as bad infrastructure, bad health, bad geography, and poor education. All of these factors could lead to poverty. In addition, the growth of investment capital is the basis of growth in jobs and the uptake of new technology in the sense that it is linked to the real economy. It is one of the major driving forces to enhance economic development and it is also the engines of wealth and income generation in the global economy through their capacity to enhance the volume of investment. However, it could also be solved with specific types of aid programs and can eliminate the worst of extreme poverty in the world, and would be relatively inexpensive for the developed world.

Sachs indicates that extreme poverty has been being eliminated via free enterprise, trade, and investment in countries such as China, Bangladesh, and India. Sachs constructed a plan to improve education, local infrastructure, technology, and healthcare which are needed in the poor countries. For this reason, he argues that the long-term sustainable economic development can be fostered. Sachs aims to end extreme poverty as such action could expand the world economy. However, it could also eliminate the breeding grounds for disease, terrorism, and civil unrest. Sachs considers the creation of the preconditions for takeoff is a matter of building social overhead capital including railways, roads, ports, and shifting the economic setting from agriculture and trade to manufacture is beneficial. I also argue that by enhancing free enterprise, trade and investment could be one of important factors to contribute to end poverty. According to Smith argues that a freedom of trade and enterprise are considered as a means of increasing the real income of the country (pp. 698-699).

I strongly agree with Sachs that the unspecific aid programs and lacking of clear goals will tend to fail. That is why some of the Western assistance has not produced the necessary effects for the poor countries. However, this failure does not mean that the Western aid fails but the more specific aid programs, the greater the capacity needed for execution. Thus, the greater need for robust and competent governance should be fostered. It is not clear how to make the aid programs in the absence of such governance that Sachs intends. Although, I reckon that the objectives of foreign aid have been many, the core of its program aims to promote the economic recovery and help encourage the growth of the underdeveloped countries. It is conceivable that the international situation confronting the nation in the future will realign the order of the importance of these objectives. Still other objectives have been present in the minds of the sponsors and of the administrators of the many foreign aid programs. For instance, there have been many foreign aid programs in many countries for many years which they have been aimed at several political and economic objectives, both short term and long term. However, it is hopeless to look for any single clear standard of these aid programs. More or less, I reckon that the foreign aid could contribute to the economic growth of other nations but specific goals and programs are required to effectively achieve its goal. But I still acknowledge that the judgment of the success of foreign aid programs is difficult. Therefore, the aid programs he was setting forth should be tailored to the specific countries and conditions which are based on the needs of those countries.

In addition, Sachs argues that the foreign aid ⁽⁷⁾ should be increased in order offer a greater return to private investment. I agree with Sachs that when these investments are made, the private entrepreneurs will earn a greater rate of return on their businesses which could trigger market-led economic growth. The market economics involve human capital, business capital, public institutional capital, infrastructure, and knowledge capital could challenge in the market and thus, the extreme poverty can be met.
He also argues that the extreme global poverty ⁽⁸⁾ could be eliminated by 2025 if the world rich countries intend to increase their combined foreign aid budgets between 135 billion and 195 billion dollar for the next decade and properly allocate that money. Sachs might be persuasive that the political, economic and ethical returns to improving the plight of 1.1 billion people would be enormous and thus, he brings a unique background to this issue.

In this context, foreign aid is as an important ingredient in fighting poverty and accelerating economic growth in developing country, especially in the very poorest countries, where people may not be able to generate the resources needed to finance investment or health and education program. However, Sachs’s experiences in Russia did not turn out so well. I think what Sachs is proposing is that he aims to provide aid to countries to remove the barriers for them to become self sufficient. However, some barriers would be highly involved such as disease, lack of access to education, poverty traps, geography traps, and fiscal traps, among others. Poverty itself will take a bit longer although the huge amount of assistances and help from the rich countries for the poor countries. I also argue that although, aid has not always worked well, it has been critical for poverty reduction and growth in many countries and helped prevent event worse performance in many other countries. This means that many of the weaknesses of aid have more to do with the donors than with the recipients’ countries. For instance, a range of successful aid recipient’s countries such Korea, Botswana, Indonesia, Mozambique, and Uganda (Perkins, 2006).

Sachs argues that corruption and poor governance are one of the root causes of poverty and stresses that untreated diseases, like HIV/AIDS and malaria, climate change, and geographical factors play the major role. Sachs sees the issue of poverty from the point of view of real impoverished people due to the fact of his experiences. The present aid situation is not adequate. While the rich countries pretend to help the poor, many poor countries pretend to reform (p. 266). Thus, the direct assistance from the rich countries to poor countries should increase dramatically but the funds should be used in six categories of key investments such as first, human capital to improve health, nutrition, and skills; second, business capital to improve technology in agriculture, industry, and services; third, infrastructure to improve roads, power, sanitation, transportation, and communications; fourth, natural capital to improve soils and ecology; fifth, public institutional capital to improve legal, governmental, and police systems; sixth, knowledge capital to improve scientific and technological expertise. Instead, if there is strong governance and institutions, it could help improve the environment for investment by reducing risk and increasing profitability. For instance, investors are more likely to make long term investments where they feel property rights are secure and their properties will not be confiscated. While low levels of corruption help reduce the costs of investment, reduce risks, and increase productivity.

However, corruption and poor governance are not the only problems, some factors are involved. For example, Bolivia got the critical handicaps on the international economic stage. The Bolivia’s exports demand a very high price due to the transportation difficulties. Thus, Bolivia could not build development on agricultural products’ exports or the low level manufactures which the developing countries often use as stepping stones. For this reason, it seems to me that Bolivia could not develop the export of services to increase its development but they need a certain economic foundation. In addition, he argues that the primary problems of development stem from poor governance in the developing world. However, I argue that although some of the well governed countries which have better resource, infrastructure, and health could hardly to produce significant, reliable economic growth.

Sachs also emphasizes the Keynes’ theory about the scientific and technological innovation to maintain a long-term economics growth. Sachs predicts the growth during the throws of the Great Depression in America and his predictions become correct. This means that the technological and scientific innovation play major roles in alleviating extreme poverty in America, and the rest of the world. The scientific and technological enhancements permit goods and services to be traded freely which are impediments to the economic stability and growth in the underdeveloped countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. However, there is no one-size-fits-most panacea; I agree with Sachs that the importance of grassroots programs tailored to demographics, and specific needs. The rest of the world often thinks that the Africans are as one ethnicity which faces similar challenges. When this area considers as one of the neediest, it is no surprise that the small-scale operations aimed at specific countries. Therefore, when knowledge is shared, the world can take real steps toward the end of poverty.

Sachs says that help would be required not just for a few years but for most of the period until 2025. Then, Sachs raises the question whether the developed world could afford to help the poor countries given the technological progress; the question is whether they could afford not to. The central strategy of Sachs aims to address the issue of how much the total official development assistances are required to achieve the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2025. Sachs also acknowledges that the governments should not invest in business capital. Particularly, when the governments manage businesses, they tend to do so for political rather than economic reasons. However, I think Sachs fails to consider the case of the government of Nigeria and Kenya which they allocate health and education investments in a nonpolitical manner. The assumption that Sachs made is that the governments are corrupt.

In addition, Sachs focuses on the economic development such as Bolivia, Poland and Russia by highlighting on geography, climate, disease and level of infrastructure which he believes it has a significant impact on the speed of economic growth. For instance, roads are important not only to connect urban commercial facilities but to connect remote villages to markets so they can by goods more cheaply and sell their products at better prices to a larger market. In this way, it is true that better infrastructure such as building roads could be an important ingredient in the alleviation of rural poverty. I agree with Sachs that by ending the global poverty by 2025 does need the resolute efforts from both the rich countries and the poor countries. And thus, they could start a global compact between them. It is true that this strategy is required not only for scaling up the investments which could end poverty but also for a system of governance that could empower the poor. Hence, this approach could offer the tools to the impoverished countries across the world for sustainable development by indicating the plans and financing mechanisms which are needed to achieve this goal.

Conclusion:

Finally, Sachs’s aim is to tackle the issues of underdevelopment and global poverty and how to end poverty by 2025 set in the Millennium Development Goal. He addresses certain issues which are one of the most compelling plans to alleviate poverty that economists often underestimate. He tries to show a big picture of how the whole societies emerge from poverty by explaining his work in Bolivia, India, Russia, Africa, China, and other countries integrating the set of solutions for economic, environmental, social, political problems which challenge the poorest countries. I come to several conclusions: First, Sachs might be right that poverty can be eradicated by 2025. Second, more needs to be done. Third, the current system is not properly focused. Fourth, we can all play a role to eradicate poverty. Although, there have been efforts made in the past but they were not well-planned and put in place as they should have been. I am strongly confident that Sachs’s book is a road map to end poverty and what I find most encouraging, useful, interesting, that the concepts and plans that he discusses could surely bring real tangible benefit to the poor areas. Although, many argue that lot of money has been offered to solve the problem. However, I agree with Sachs that the right amount of money must be allocated to the right things and with specific goals. I am confident that one time that this understanding might become the centre piece of the industrialized countries. However, despite the potential shortcomings of the specifics of his plan, I think that Sachs starts the conversation at the right spot that the poverty could end in our generations. And, I think his book is quite challenging and ambitious and it is necessity to serve as a useful tool for the future academic research.

(By Bong Angkeara)

The Phillippines Rising Bioethanol Industry

2014-05-21T11:01:00.000+07:00

The rapid growth of Philippines’s economy has led to an increase in demand for energy which has raised concerns in the country about the national energy security. Philippines imported 100 million barrels of oil in 2004 which satisfies 36.6 percent of its energy requirements. It is expected that the oil import requirements of the country would reach 120 million barrels in 2013. Annually, the country needs approximately 500 million liters of ethanol for the production, which means the country requires 25 ethanol plants to produce annual output of 20 million litres. The country’s first ethanol plant with that production capacity, San Carlos Bioenergy Inc., was built in San Carlos city. Given to the energy security concerns of the nation, the replacement of oil by using bioethanol as a fuel has significantly increased and hence the expansion of agricultural production on arable land is needed.

The Biofuels Act in the Philippines was adopted in 2007. The main thrusts of the law intend to reduce importing fossil fuels with its erratic price fluctuations by providing a local supply of alternative and renewable energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and cut the carbon dioxide emissions believing to cause the global warming. Therefore, the Department of Agriculture was assigned to promote the cultivation of biofuel feedstock and to balance the food and fuel requirements.

Increasing energy efficiency and developing sustainable energy sources are the key approaches to address the climate change. The biofuels emerged as an alternative to fossil fuels to promote as a cleaner source of energy. However, the biofuels productions have also triggered controversy for soaring the prices of food. Therefore, the key issue raises in this case is an increase in food prices. This means that an increase in the demand for feedstock to produce bioethanol would bring about a large increase in the prices of agricultural products (CBO, 2009). The World Bank has found that 75 percent of an increase in price was due to biofuels (Stefan, 2008). The biofuel crops would need thousands of hectares of arable land and hence will reduce cropping foods and cause the food shortages. The effects transforming crops into biofuels are catastrophic (FAO, 2008).

Two alternative options are recommended to ease an increase pressure on food prices. The Philippines’s government should firstly restricting on bioethanol process products exports, and secondly, encouraging further expansion of biofuel industry in the country.

Firstly, to ease an increasing pressure on food prices, the government should reduce necessary exported bioethanol processed products. This means that if there is a lack of bioethanol processed resources, it would push the prices up. The feedstock prices would increase and hence the food prices would also increase (Huanguang et al., 2008). The country requires adequate bioethanol resources to produce as planned and particularly meet the local market while the feedstock for biofuel production expanded dramatically in the country. Therefore, with limit of bioethanol resources, the government should consider carefully for exporting the bioethanol processed products such as sugarcane, sugar beets, corn and other crops to the foreign countries. In addition, the expansion of biofuel would lead to further pressure on food security. Hence, a careful and rigorous assessment of the effects of promoting biofuels in the Philippines should be conducted to alleviate the possible negative impacts of biofuel on food security and to ensure both food security and energy security in the country. However, the food price is an issue of a global nature which has complex causes and impacts at the international level (OECD, 2008). So, it is uncertain whether this option would ease the pressure on food prices and food security. Although this uncertainty, the government should advance its bioethanol industry in a sustainable way and focus more on the productivity which enhanced further investments.

Secondly, to secure the biofuel market and decrease in food prices, the government should encourage further expansions of biofuel industry which promotes alternative energy sources and support further economic growth in the country. The biofuels development is considered for the fastest growing market for agricultural products and would create great opportunity (Vineet et al., p.2). However, it could endanger the food security (Hartmut, 2008). The government has provided other incentives to encourage the biofuel expansion such as value added tax, production incentives, and direct subsidies. According to the Philippines’ plan for the expansion of bioethanol, it is expected that the annual production of 120 million barrels of bioethanol will be reached by 2013. This means that when the country could secure the supply of biofuels for its market, the food prices would accordingly go down. However, it also depends on the international market, particularly the United States (US), Brazil and other major countries which could also impact on the international agriculture prices. According to Prakash, the global biofuel production could expand from 50 to 250 billion litres by 2025. This expansion would offer remarkable opportunities for the poor (2007, p.2). In addition, the bioethanol program could provide the rural households an increase in their farming incomes. For instance, the rural households could provide their access to land and sell their agricultural products in the market as the bioethanol program is further expanded. Therefore, encouraging further expansions of biofuel development would provide better opportunity for its economic development growth, help to secure the food prices, and sustain the environments.

Although, both alternative options above have their own advantages, option two is recommended because it is better for addressing the key issue. The government should further expand the development of bioethanol program in order to improve its national energy security, stimulate agricultural development, and importantly decrease the food prices. The use of bioethanol as a fuel has significantly increased worldwide since its benefits, safety, and availability. It significantly reduces harmful exhaust emissions and carbon monoxide levels. The greater the number of biofuel suppliers, the lower the risk dependency (Neff, 1997). In addition, the biofuels could stimulate rural economic growth through providing employment and creating demand for goods and services (Vineet et al., 2008). Given these benefits, it is also important to contribute to the environmental sustainability and sustainable energy sources (IAASTD, 2008).

Finally, given to the benefits of bioethanol would protect the environment, improve the energy security, and enhance the agricultural productivity in the country; the expansion of the bioethanol programs should be enhanced.

(By Bong Angkeara)

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How important are crises and conflicts, even sometimes wars, for stimulating development?

2014-05-15T20:24:00.000+07:00

Many countries around the world have debated about development issues such as social and economic development so as to bring development for their countries and to get rid of poverty and hunger. Therefore, some definitions of development have been defined such as the development is an expansion of economy and increase of economic development (Peter, 2008). Others defined that it is an increase of people’s choices (Sen 1999, p. 36). The development is divided into two main types. That is, spontaneous and intentional development. The negative and positive outcomes refer to the spontaneous development and the intentional development deals with the negative of spontaneous development. On this topic of development, there are some opinions states that ‘Conflicts and crises, even sometimes wars are significant for stimulating development’.

Regarding this statement, I will argue these opinions due to three main reasons such as war generally brings holocausts, death, and poverty, et cetera. But at the same time, it can be seen both positive and negative effects for both sides. Another reason is that governments’ policies and actions are more important after the crisis, conflicts and wars. Having said that, the necessity of crises and conflicts, even sometimes wars just shape the development but it does not stimulate the development. The other reason is that, crises and conflicts lead to instability and underdevelopment in the society. In order to support my argument, I will discuss about the effect of crises and conflicts, and war. Some evidences and examples will be provided.

First, the positive effect of war can shape economic development in the countries. For instance, the war on poverty, which is the United States (US) government’s strategies, aims to eliminate hunger across the country. Then the poverty reduction plan is created by the government to enhance the living condition of the people and promote full employment and equal opportunity for the African Americans to end poverty in the United States. Nevertheless, it is sometimes unsuccessful to solve this problem because of the inequality of income and job opportunities. So the government will then announce a war state in order to fight poverty and hunger. As evidence, Lyndon in the United States announced the war on poverty in 1964 due to the unemployment issues and the inequitable income of the black and white people. By using this strategy, it can be seen that there is a notably decrease of unemployment rate between the blacks and whites. The blacks were 17.4 percent; which dropped to 3.4 per cent. the whites were 7.1 percent which dropped to 1.6 percent in 1961 after the war on poverty (Fine 1988, p.72). Therefore, it can be seen that the war on poverty can help to improve the people’s living standard in the country. Another example of the positive effect of the war is the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989. There are two different systems in Germany called capitalism and communism prior to the fall of Berlin Wall. Then, it has been combined into a one system after the Berlin fall; which the economy’s condition was changed from the top down to bottom up (Friedman 2005, pp. 53-55). It is not only the changes of the economy’s condition but also the combination of the West and East Germany as Germany. Since they have united, the development in Germany has been notably improved. Therefore, the Berlin Wall fall is a positive effect which can shape development.

Furthermore, the positive outcome from crises is lessons-learnt. The government sometimes realizes that there are problems, which will affect the development and economic growth, needed to be addressed and solved, but they seem to ignore the problems and no actions have been taken. As a result, crises appear. As an example, in late 1990s in England, the sexuality became a crisis due to an increase of sexual transmission. Thus, a high demand for health care services is needed. Concurrently, the National Sexual Health Strategies was issued by the government of the United Kingdom, which aims to protect the transmission across the society (Laverty 2005, pp. 37-43). Moreover, the war of independence is also another positive effect. Many countries around the world had been colonized by the other countries. So, it is impossible to make development happens in that country. Thus, the war of independence is created such as Algeria and Zimbabwe (Arnold, 1992).

However, if we look at the negative effect of the war, it causes severe consequence with high casualties. That is: many people die and injure; the infrastructures were destroyed; and most of the sectors were damaged in the whole society. For instance, the First World War; It was a global war and primarily occurred in Europe from 1914 to 1918. Coming to the end of the war, the total estimated casualties both the civilian and military was more than 40 million; which 20 million were killed including about 10 million civilian and 9.7 million military were died. Around 21 million were wounded (National Archives, 2008). Thus, we can see that war brought about big holocaust for the whole country and the globe. That is, how many people were died and how many infrastructures were destroyed, et cetera. Similarly, the Second World War, It was a conflict global military, which began in Europe from 1939 to 1945. The world's nations were split by this global conflict. There were around 100 million military soldiers mobilized across the state of the war. During the closing days Second World War, the nuclear weapons were detonated by the United States. On 6 August 1945, the first nuclear weapon was detonated by the US on the Hiroshima’s territory, which is a one of the major Japanese city. Three days later, the second bomb occurred on Nagasaki which is another major Japanese city. Around 120,000 people and even more over time were immediately killed by these bombs. Seriously, not only these people died but also the bombs’ effect impacts on the rest of the Japanese people as a whole till present. At the end, the total estimated human loss was approximately 72 million people. About 25 million military soldiers were killed including around 4 million prisoners’ death of war. About 47 million civilians were killed including roughly 20 million died due to the war which related to the disease and famine. (National Archives, 2008). So, we can see that how much casualties due to the war killed the human beings and the effect of war; which leads to a poverty and crises for the whole world. As a result, there was no development during the war but living in hunger and poverty. If we look the war in Algeria, 141,000 Algerian were killed during the war in1954. 51,800 French were wounded and 17,250 were killed. Not only many people die or wounded but also the other sectors and infrastructures in the whole society were severely damaged and destroyed. That is, roads, bridges, schools, et cetera (Arnold 1992, pp. 10-12). Similarly, in 1965 in Zimbabwe, 45,000 were killed during the war. So, the people were forced to be in the military service which means that they need almost all males to be soldiers in order to support war. Therefore, we can see that there is no development almost all sectors in Zimbabwe during this period (Arnold 1992, pp. 68-70).

After war, some countries can develop their countries faster than the others. As evidence, the infrastructure, poverty and socioeconomic development in Cambodia still poor after getting peace in 1989 (Annear, 1997). According to (Koubi, 2006), researched the war impact on economic growth between 1975 and 1989. That is, most of the countries, which do not have involvement in the war, always have more economic growth than countries involved. Moreover, the average of the expenditure of government, the economic growth of GDP, real income, and investment rate were used to measure the effects of the economy of the war. But due to some other factors, which also could contribute to the growth of the economy, it was difficult to measure (Lindgren 2005, pp. 84-87). It is hard to state that war stimulate development as there are some factors, which contribute to development. Generally, wars produce severe casualties and holocaust in the society.

After the Asian financial crisis in late 1990s, social policies attentions were taken into account by the government. The governments started adopting some strategies such as employment services improvement, financial assistance for poor families, and training (Chan 2000 pp. 520-522). Before the crisis, the progress of democracy in South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan were not well connected to the social policy. Nevertheless, this trend has been improved by this economic crisis (Croissant 2003, pp. 520-523). On the other hand, they were linked to the response of good government policies (Martin 1998, pp. 30-33). That is, it does not result from the crisis alone. Moreover, an example of Indonesia was shown due to the situation of finance remained inadequate such as depreciated currency and floating rates. So, we can see that it is vital for the government’s policies which were used in crises’ responses. Therefore, after the crisis and conflict, even sometimes war, it is good or bad based on the government’s policies used to bring development. In addition, economic development also needs good policies as it is necessary to development efforts success (Stiglitz 1998, p. 5).

In contrary, if a bad policy was used by the government, the crises and conflicts will bring about underdevelopment and violence in terms of social, economic and political instability. As evidence, a conflict between Pol Pot and Lon Nol in 1975 in Cambodia, when he came to power, Pol Pot used his bad and cruel policies which made the whole country’s infrastructures destroyed and all the people live in hunger and horror. That is, all the people, who were living in the city, were evacuated to the rural areas and provinces to work in the rice fields almost all days and nights without giving enough food. They forced the innocent people to work like animals. Moreover, more than two million innocent people were killed during his cruel regime. In addition, Cambodia was isolated from the international (Sina and Zimmer, 2005, pp. 330-333). As evidence, we can see that it was underdevelopment during this period because the infrastructures were destroyed and families have been separated from their parents and siblings. That is, people, who lived under his regime, only know the word ‘Angkar’ (which means organisation). Moreover, there was no freedom for people to express their ideas. Thus, it is contradicted to Sen’s development definition which it is as the real freedoms that people enjoy and people’s choices enlargement (Sen 1999, p. 36).

In addition, conflicts sometimes bring about violence in the society causing a decrease of economic development. According to (Lindgren 2005, pp. 70-75), ‘Different conflicts would result in different impacts. There are of four types of armed conflict’. The internal armed conflict is chosen to explain in this context. This conflict occurs between the opposition groups and a state itself. It does not get involved from the other countries. As an example, in 1997 in Cambodia, two political parties were in the conflict both political wordings and fighting afterwards. That is, the current political party called the Cambodian People’s Party and Funcinpec party. The political conflicts were then become a fighting in the central city of Phnom Penh. Like a war in the city by using all soldiers and military forces to fight each other which make the whole country into political and economical instability and people’s horror. At the end, the current political leading party was hardly got controlled the situations. So some people, who are in the conflict areas, moved to the other areas for a while. Concurrently, there were a lot of robberies from the innocent people and business people and killings because of this conflict. Some business properties have been destroyed and robbed. Then, the current leading party got controlled the situation. However, it took long times to secure the social security and public order. Not only the political and economic instability but also the impact on the other sectors in the country such as international and local business and investment stopped. Some companies were completely destroyed during that time. Specially, most of the major international business and investment companies moved to the neighboring countries such as Thailand and Vietnam (Springer, 2004). Similarly, in Thailand, there was a conflict of political party - between the current leading party and opposition party. Then a coup detat was established by the opposition party by using military forces to evacuate the current prime minister. Then, they came to power. As a result, the political situation was severe instability in the whole country. It effects on the economic development and other sectors et cetera. That is, the rising of inflation rate, interest rate and a decrease in tourism after this conflict. Four percent decreased compared to Malaysia and Indonesia due to this conflict. While the economic growth of Thai government was well increased before the coup and the international relations were well connected to the other nations. According to Ockey, the relation between Thai government and the international still remained poor after this conflict (2006, pp. 148-149).

Finally, based on my arguments, evidences and examples, I disagree with the topic as the conflicts and crises, even sometimes wars are significant for stimulating development. First, the war generally brings holocausts, death, and poverty in the whole society. Thus, there is no development for almost all sectors during conducting the war. Concurrently, it can be seen both positive and negative effects of the war. However, it does not stimulate development but it just shapes development. Second, the good policies and actions of the government are more important to bring development for the country after the crises and conflicts. Third, the crises and conflicts lead to the instability and underdevelopment in the society. Evidently, a result of the conflict and crisis will be underdevelopment rather than the development. As the above evidence from Cambodia and Thailand’s cases, which show the conflicts, bring about violence and strong impact on the development of the economy and the political instability in the whole country.

(By Bong Angkeara)

Short response: what are the drivers of change in social policy within international institutions?

2014-05-12T21:16:00.000+07:00

Under what circumstances does social policy change? There are some significant international institutions which have been established to assist in international and regional development such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB), etc. especially, to help the poor or developing countries both financially and socially. Social policies in the World Bank have evolved into three conceptually and operationally separate agenda: ‘social welfare, social protection and social development’ Hall, A (2007). According to Deacon, B (2007) states that at the lower level of organization inside the World Bank (IBRD and IDA), the sectors of interests to us changed significantly in 1996. Before then existed the three departments: environment, education and social policy. Most of the social policy questions were addressed by the education and social policy department, which focused on labor-intensive growth, investment in education and health, and pension reform backed up by a then ill-defined ‘safety net’ for the poor. For instance, Deacon, B (2007) describes that in 1996, a major reform gave rise to five ‘networks’ such as Finance, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD), Private Sector and Infrastructure (FPSI), Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM), Human Development Network (HD) and Operational Core Services (OCS) to alleviate the poverty in the poor and developing countries and to enhance economic and social development.

In addition, Deancon, B (2007) states that these reforms included ‘macroeconomic policy adjustments’ – fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy and a variety of other measures as well, from privatization to trade liberation and financial sector reform. Furthermore, (IMF, 1995: 1) shows ‘macroeconomic stability’, a marked based environment for trade and investment, good government through a transparent legal framework and institutions, and participatory development through active participation of all groups in society and social policies, including social safety nets to protect the poor in the period of cost effective social expenditures, economic reform, and employment making labor market policies.

Not only the international institutions but also local institutions, communities and local government play a key role in enhancing economic and social development. The bank establishes policy of the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review with INGO and local NGO involvement which focused on structural adjustment policies in several countries, it concluded that ‘structural adjustment policies’ have contributed to the further impoverishment of marginalization of populations while improving economic inequity (World Bank, 2002a). For example, Oxfam has an interest in being involved in attempts to reach the poorest of the poor. They were also designed to ‘stimulate participatory development initiatives’ by offering small scale-financing to NGOs, community, small firms and entrepreneurs (Fumo et al., 2000: 9). Women with entrepreneurial skills have often been beneficiaries of these (Subbarao and Bonnergee, 1997). However, they were subsequently criticized (Fumo et al., 2000: 25; Hall and Midgeley, 2004: 274) on four counts: they often did not reach the poor but instead proactive NGOs; they were not mainstreamed into government anti-poverty policy; they became substitutes for government expenditure so that if a social fund was active in health provision the equivalent government budget line might be cut; and they were not linked to funding sources that were sustainable in the long term. However, the prime motivating force for its creation was the belief at the height of the neoliberal ascendancy of the 1990s, which increased global trade was, along with the ‘liberalization of capital flows’, the key to increased world prosperity. It was seen as a force to drive down both tariff barriers and non tariff barriers to international trade (Hall, A 2007).

In summary, the economic and social policy reforms within the international institutions, local government, institutions and communities are the key driver of change in social policy for enhancing economic and social development of the poor and developing countries. Even if a greater measure of conceptual and operational integration and collaboration were possible in theory among the diverse arms of ‘social policy’ within the bank, there remains a major practical obstacle to social policy mainstreaming in the organization.

(Writer: Bong Angkeara)

School Project Proposal in Cambodia

2014-05-04T21:51:00.000+07:00

1. Introduction and justification

During the Khmer Rouge regime (Pol Pot), all infrastructures in Cambodia were almost destroyed such as schools, hospitals,

roads, bridges, and other public and private buildings. Moreover, more than three million innocent people were cruelly killed including professors, doctors, teachers, civil servants, and ordinary people, it is estimated that approximately 80 percents of the Cambodian educators were killed and the education system was totally eliminated by the regime (Judy, 2008). Therefore, this regime has left the Cambodian people live in poverty for decades till present. After this regime collapsed, the government of Cambodia has started developing the infrastructures in various parts of the country. Particularly, primary school has been rebuilt in major parts of the country. However, the primary education is still primarily concerned due to thousands of villages still lack a functional primary school in the remote and rural areas across the country. About 90 percents of the poor who live in the rural areas cannot attend school due to poverty and a lack of school infrastructure. Therefore, building school infrastructure is very crucial to increase the literacy level and provide better access to primary education.

Therefore, this project is proposed for building a new primary school in Korkisom village, Svay Teap district, Svay Rieng province in Cambodia to increase the literacy level in the primary education in this community which funds will be sourced from the World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB). The length of this project is for two-year plan which commences from January, 2009 to the end of December, 2010. Human resource development is one of the most priorities for Cambodian government to provide the basic education to all Cambodian people (MOEYS, 2008). Thus, this project fits into the government’s strategies to restore education for developing the economy and for poverty reduction, which is one of the most effective ways for country development.

Particularly, this school project will help the local community who live in extreme poverty are able to attend the school for their future development. This project aims to increase in the level of literacy, enrolment and retention rate in the primary education, provide increased and better access to school at close proximity, and establish a school management board for future sustainability in the community. Hence, the children and disadvantaged groups who live in this village are able to enroll and attend the primary education in order to help them improve and change their future and lives in the long term. As a result, there will be an increase a literacy level and school enrolment rate in the community. Therefore, the illiteracy and poverty will be reduced respectively in the future.

1.1 Background

This project is managed by the American Assistance for Cambodia (AAC) which is a non profit organization helping to improve the opportunities for the Cambodian children and the poor to be able to attend primary education. Since Svay Rieng province is one of the poorest provinces in Cambodia, this project is proposed to build a new primary school at Korkisom village, Svay Teap district, Cambodia to help the local community to attend primary education and increase the literacy level in this village. Three main factors such as geographical factor, and insufficient primary education school have been primarily considered by ACC.

First, the geographic factor; Korkisom village locates in Svay Teap district, Svay Rieng province in the Southeast of Cambodia. The total population of Svay Rieng province is around 478,252 which are 4.2 percents of the whole population of Cambodia. Korkisom village is one of the poorest villages in this province. 90 percents of those who live in this area are farmers. So, their main source of income is from farming (NRDB, 2008). This village faces a lot of difficulties almost all sectors, particularly poor infrastructure, low level of living standard, high illiterate rate et cetera. Given this area is remote and rural from the heart of the city, there is less independent organization, civil society, or either the government institutions have not yet taken for development. Therefore, there is almost all sectors in this area are not developed by the government or any non-government organization which leads to an extreme poverty and high illiteracy rate for the people who live in this village.

Second, insufficient primary school; in this province, 67 per cent of the whole population has not completed the primary school due to the lack of school infrastructure and poverty (Province Guide, 2008). Thus, it is of a high concern of providing education particularly, at the remote and rural areas. Therefore, this project proposed to build a new school in this village to increase the number of enrolment in the primary school, and reduce the poverty in this community. Due to these reasons, this village is highly taken into account to build a new school so as to increase the primary education enrollment rate and provide the local community to be able to attend school for their long life future.

2. Project Rationale

This project mainly aims to increase the literacy level and school enrolment and retention rate in this area by 80 percents by 2010. There will be more chances for the local community including children, the disabled, and the disadvantaged groups to attend primary school. In addition, this project will also provide a closest access to school in the village. Therefore, a walking distance to school will be reduced from 10 kilometers to about 200 meters by January, 2010 and the school enrolment ages reduced from 7 years to 5 years which enable the local community able to join school. Hence, more children will be beneficial for education and they would be able improve their lives for their future and overall, the illiteracy level, and poverty will be reduced respectively. This project will also be a model to attract government institutions and non governmental organization to provide further development in order to promote education and improve the living standard as well as infrastructure for this community.

Therefore, ACC is not only looking for sources from the WB and ADB but also further assistances from the government institutions, other international organizations, and relevant educational institutions which get involved in education and development at the primary school level.

3. Stakeholders Involvement

ACC will be taking fully responsible for managing this project and working with relevant stakeholders. The length of this project has been set up for two-year plan which will be held from January, 2009 to the end of December, 2010. ACC will work with its own staff and relevant stakeholders including local community, local leaders, religious leader, and contractor as a community networks from the earlier stage to the evaluation stage. Moreover, relevant government institutions and donors such as the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MOEYS), District Education Department (DED), Provincial Education Department (PED), Ministry of Environment (MOE), Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), Ministry of Health (MOH), and Ministry of Public Works and Transports, WB, and ADB are also contributing in term of advices or technical assistances. ACC cannot work alone without getting supports or helps from the community or relevant stakeholders. Thus, they need to cooperate closely with all these stakeholders to ensure an achievable outcome of this project.

4. Goal and Objectives

The main goal of this project intends to provide a primary education to the local community in order to increase the literacy level by 80 percents by the end of December, 2010. When the school is constructed, more children will be able to have chances to attend school. Thus, more children will be educated and the illiteracy level will be reduced accordingly. To achieve this goal, three main objectives needed to be addressed.

First, we aim to increase the enrolment and retention rate by 80 percents by the end of December, 2010. It is necessary to bring education to the rural children who have been deprived from the educational facilities. Most of the people in this rural village are uneducated. Most of them live in poverty and are difficult to afford themselves. The majority of people are doing farm. When the children come to a school age, they help their families to do farming in stead of attending school due to a long distance. However, after this school is constructed, more children in this community including pupils, disadvantaged and ethnic group will be able to join education. Hence, it is expected that the school enrollment rate will be increased by 80 percents by the end of December 2010.

Second, one of the objectives intends to provide an increased access to school at close proximity. Most of the people who live in this remote and rural village meet lots of difficulties for their lives and suffer from a lack of education particularly. In addition, there is no official school in this village which caused them to give up attending the school. Only the community school has been set up without qualified teachers and school materials. The school has no roof, tables, and insufficient materials for teaching. There is one government school which locates about 10 kilometers from this village. Therefore most of the children are not able to attend school. Moreover, most of girls have less chance than boys to attend school due to a long distance. When the school is available for this village, a walking distance to school will be reduced from 10 kilometers to about 200 meters. The school enrolment age is also reduced from 7 years to 5 years. Hence, the children will be available for having chances to attend school.

Third, this project aims to set up a school management board for sustainability by April, 2009. The school management board is set up to be responsible for all the school activities involved, for instance, drawing up the school plan and management for the benefit of the students. Particularly, this team ensures the functioning and sustainability of school in order to achieve the main goal and objectives of this project. The team needs to be joint by five members including a teacher representative, a local education representative, and other two external representatives to ensure the effectiveness of school functioning and management. The above main objectives are the significant indicators to ensure that the goal and objectives are achievable. However, the proposed detailed activities are needed to be implemented to ensure achieving the above goal and objectives.

5. Project Activity Summary

Some activities are implemented to respond to the above goal and objectives of the project. These activities will be discussed in details as follows:

5.1 Objective 1: To increase enrolment and retention rates
5.1.1 Conduct initial meeting with local leaders

Holding an initial meeting with the local leaders in advance to introduce the purpose of the coming educational campaign, which will be held on semesterly from January, 2009, is significantly important for coordinating the educational campaigns. The first meeting will be conducted early January, 2009 and second and third meeting in July, 2009 and January, 2010. The meeting aims to keep the local leaders and the community about the project plan and activities. So, that the information will be well-informed and the team has enough time for the preparation of the upcoming educational campaign. More importantly, it is quite important that all the local communities including parents, villagers, local leaders, and provincial and district education department representatives participate in this campaign in order to promote and improve the awareness of the importance of education for their children.

5.1.2 Conduct educational campaign

To raise and improve the awareness of education is significant for achieving the goal and objectives of this project. It is difficult for the local community particularly, in the remote and rural area which most of them are less educated and far behind the awareness and importance of education. So, ACC needs to work hard with relevant stakeholders such as the local leaders, local community, and provincial and district education department to enhance the effectiveness of this campaign and ensure that the information reaches all the local people and near by the villages and districts. This campaign will focus on the awareness and importance of primary education for their children. Hence, the campaign plays an important role in promoting education’s awareness for the whole community. Given to a deep understanding of the importance primary education among the local communities, the school enrolment and retention rates will increase gradually.

Therefore, 4 educational awareness campaigns will be held each quarterly from March, 2009 to improve the awareness and importance of education for primary education for the local community. Given the understanding of the importance of education from this campaign’s delivery, there will be an increase in school enrolment. Hence, the literacy level will be increased in the community.

5.1.3 Establish a counseling office

About 80 percents of those, who live in this remote and rural village is uneducated and seriously effects from the Pol Pot regime and the above educational campaign conducted, is not enough for them to faster understand on the awareness and importance of education for their children’s future. Hence one counseling office will be established to enhance the retention rate and counsel the local people on the importance of education. This office will deliver educational counselling services to the local community including children, parents, students, youth leader and local leaders. Particularly, for those who experience lack of the understanding of education. The services of this office particularly implement and increase the awareness of the importance of education which enhance the local community’s understanding and decrease the illiteracy rate among this community. Moreover, ACC needs to work closely with the district education department, provincial education department, and MOEYS to help improve the awareness of the importance of education and better understanding on the education among this community. Thus, it will gradually increase and help improve the local community’s understanding on the awareness and importance of education. So, it is expected that the retention rate will be enhanced by December, 2010.

5.1.4 Conduct training for local leaders on children’s rights

Moreover, in order to increase the school enrolment rate, it is crucial that ACC needs to conduct the training for the local leaders on the children’s rights on education access for a long term goal. So, that they could understand more the importance of children’s right particularly, when their children reach the age for education. This training aims to equip the local leaders’ knowledge on the awareness and importance of education so that they can train and lobby the local community particularly, parents, children and villagers to well understand on their children’s rights on access to education and how this could change their children’s future. They will promote and deliver education’s services for better understanding among the community. Hence, given to a more understanding and awareness of the importance of education among the villagers and communities, the school enrolment rate will be increased accordingly which leads to an increase in the literacy level.

5.1.5 Support children’s forum

The school management board coordinates to set up the children’s forum for the academic discussion competition for children which will be conducted quarterly from January, 2010 to the end of December, 2010. This forum is prepared by the school management board. The purpose of this forum aims to encourage the children to challenge each other in terms of primary education. So, that they would be able understand more about the advantages of education, and could work closely with their team to solve the problems. In this context, they can discuss and compete with their friends in the class and the whole school. Their teachers will explain them the importance of education and teach them how to use the available resources available for them and their local communities. Then, they would be able to spread out the information with their friends and parents in the community. So, this forum is one of the necessary forces for spreading out the information and awareness of education for their friends and the local communities. Moreover, the forum will provide them an improvement for their lives to help their communities.

5.2 Objective 2: To provide increased access to school at close proximity
5.2.1 Identify land site for school

At this stage, ACC will work closely with relevant stakeholders such as local leaders, provincial and district education department and MOEYS to identify the appropriate school land site for construction. They will also consult with MOH, MOE, and MPWT on any future effects or issues which might occur. Thus, a feasibility study of land site for school is conducted by ACC, MOEYS and MPTW. The land site for school construction needs to be abided by a master plan of MPWT and MOEYS. The school site should provide learning and community involvement. Moreover, the site should be closest to the village hub, educational needs and the poor condition of facilities, and future sustainable development. After the school is constructed, it is expected that it will provide an easy access for the local community to attend school. Thus, it will provide an increased access to school at close proximity and promote a partnership with the provincial and local education department and other communities. So, the land site for school construction will be identified by January, 2009.

5.2.2 Select contractor for school construction

Selecting a qualified contractor for school construction is very difficult in Cambodia since most of the school contractors have not officially received a license from the government. Therefore, ACC will work closely and consult thoroughly with provincial and district education department, and particularly, with MOEYS on selecting the precious experienced, qualified, and licensed school construction contractor for this project because the contractor who has licensing in school construction is very important to ensure that the project run smoothly during the implementation process, and more importantly ensure the school building infrastructures have standardized according to the project design. The contractor is daily responsible for building the school and abided by the project design which ACC provided. The contractor selection process needs to finish by the end of January, 2009. Hence, choosing a qualified school contractor will contribute and ensure to achieve the objectives of the project.

5.2.3 Coordinate procurement process for school materials

ACC mainly coordinates the procurement process with relevant school material suppliers in a well-advance due to a long distance of the village and roads’ infrastructure. They will liaise with the suppliers regarding the contracts to make sure that the school construction materials are delivered to the construction site by January, 2009 and have special prices for this project. Then, the school construction material suppliers should be better informed about the difficulties of school construction materials’ delivery due to a long distance and bad roads to the construction site. A contractor manages the school construction and report to the project team if any further construction is more needed or changed. So, ACC is responsible for ensuring that the procurement process of the school construction materials is delivered to the construction site by the proposed schedule. Moreover, ACC needs to work with the contractor to help with the procurement process for buying all the construction and school materials. The procurement process is needed to be abided by the procurement guidelines.

5.2.4 Avail teachers for school

ACC will be responsible for coordinating with the provincial and district education department to provide ten primary teachers for this school and the teachers will be available by July, 2009. To ensure the sustainability of teachers for this school in this village, the district education department needs to select the teachers from the district or village. Due to a geographic and human resource factor, it is not an easy to find teachers who live in this village or in this district. However, the district education department needs to cooperate with the provincial education department to avail some teachers to be available for teaching by January, 2010. In this context, there should have a teacher training program for at least six months and the provincial and district education department need to cooperate closely with MOEYS to provide the qualified primary teachers to conduct the training. Therefore, in the long term plan the community teachers will be upgraded and increased in order to support and provide education for their local community. And the commitment of the local teachers in promoting and providing education could bring confidences for the local community to attend and support their children to join education. Thus, it is significantly important that the teachers are contributing to the ingredient of education in the light of expected increases in primary school enrolment rate.

5.2.5 Provide better access to education

According to (MOEYS, 2008), only 26 percents of children who ages from 12 to 14 could attend primary school which is the lowest primary education access in the region. There is a big gap primary education access between the urban and rural children. The barrier of this access contributes to a very high dropout rate in the primary education. So, it is important that when the school is constructed, the local community, especially the disadvantaged groups, children will be able to join the primary school. Due to a geographic factor, the primary dropout rate is very high. Moreover, their parents do not intend to let their children go to school particularly, girls due to a long distance; the nearest schools from this village is about 10 kilometres far away. The project also aims to improve the school facilities such as library resource available for students to read and research to enhance their further understanding. Particularly, building this school will gradually expanding access to primary education for the disadvantaged groups for this remote and rural village by providing schools, classroom, library, and carrying out the educational campaign, setting up the school management board for future sustainability which is far behind the government’s primary education development, especially, MOEYS and international non governmental organizations.

In this regards, the disadvantaged groups and villagers will have more opportunities to allow their children to attend school, thus the dropout rates will be cut by providing closest school access to their village and the poverty will be gradually reduced in the community in the future.

5.2.6 Strengthen primary education

In the long term goal, strengthening and improving the primary education for the whole community is significant. The school board management is responsible for working with relevant provincial and district education department and MOEYS to provide additional resources such as books, school materials, computers, and further academic curriculum development and textbook improvement. Moreover, strengthening and enhancing primary education, MOEYS plays an important role in building capacity of the provincial and district functioning in terms of educational planning and teacher training since they have legitimate rights to the relevant education institutions. The teacher training should be conducted with the technical assistance from MOEYS and the school management board which aims to improve educational quality and curriculum development. In the mean time, most of the regional teachers are unqualified. Although, it might be difficult for the project team to liaise with the provincial and district education department in order to further strengthening the quality of education at the primary level but it is not expected to receive an immediate result and achievements but it will be gradually improved from January, 2009.

5.3 Objective 3: To establish school board management for sustainability
5.3.1 Conduct election of school management board

ACC will be responsible for coordinating to set up the school board management election which will be held early April, 2009 to provide for the educational needs of the local community. The school board management will be held every four years in conjunction with the provincial and district education department. The application will be publicly announced by the provincial and district education department for this school board members’ selection. The application must be met the requirement which set by ACC to ensure the effectiveness of management of the school. To ensure the sustainability, the members must reside within this province when they are joining the election. So, it is expected that the school board management will be set up by end of April, 2009.

5.3.2 Identify school board management’s responsibility

When the school management board is elected, this team is able to manage the general activities of the school to ensure that this school meets the community’s needs. The team has a primary function for making school policy through the decisions which are open to the public. In addition, this team needs to deal with the relevant matters such as personnel, finance, facilities, and curriculum and is also responsible for employing the necessary teachers and other staff for the school. They could select the local community teachers to join the teacher training program. Therefore, the school management board plays an important role in sustaining, maintaining the sustainability of the project’s outcome in the long term goal, and reinforce the community’s involvement and responsibilities for their children’s education.

5.3.3 Develop structure, procedures, and regulation for school

When the school management board is elected and set up in April, 2009, their main responsibilities are to develop the school structure, procedures, and regulation which is needed to abide by MOEYS. Developing the school structure, procedures, and regulation aim to articulate a common vision and provide a school framework for the local community. It is important to ensure that the staff, students, and relevant members are aware of any causes of staff harassment, inappropriate individual behaviour which could lead to be responsible for the school regulation. More importantly, due to a lack of teachers in the community, the team needs to closely work with the provincial and district education department for recruiting teachers and conducting training teachers in the community.

5.3.4 Improve the quality of education

Most of the Cambodian primary school lacks of library resources and curriculum development and particularly qualified teachers. So, the school management board will work closely with the provincial and district education department about the providing the quality of primary education. It aims to provide the local community with better education and achieve the learning outcomes necessary for the future. Therefore, the qualified teachers are needed and library resources should be available for the school. The school equipped with adequate resources such as books, and other study materials to stimulate students for further learning. Thus, it gradually increases the learning outcome for the students in the whole community.

6. Gender Analysis

In Cambodia, women’s involvement in management and controlling in the work society is less due to some factors such as education, family’s responsibilities, and particularly culture. Most of them are mainly responsible for taking care of their family and children. However, in this project, women’s involvement in the school management board committee and project decision-making process is highly considered. Women have equally rights in controlling and managing in any project’s activities to enhance the project’s achievement to reach the project’s goal and objectives. Women’s participation in this project is also highly encouraged. For instance, the women’s participation of the educational campaign is very necessary for helping to promote the awareness of the education to the local community since women can get involved deeply and closely with most of the people in the village. According to Moser argues that the roles of men and women in the third world society could offer the tools of the concepts and methodology to incorporate gender into planning (1991, p. 323). Hence, this project aims to have a gender balance for both men and women to join all the project activities in order to provide different perspectives and contribution to reach the goal and objectives of the project. The awareness for women and men are crucial for sharing common understanding for the purpose of this project which enhances an opportunity to make the project’s implementation a success.

Due to a very long distance of primary school in this village, the majority of women have not attended school. When the school is constructed, it will provide the closest proximity to the communities. Thus, more women will get an opportunity to attend education comparable to men who have always had the opportunity. The women are equal beneficiaries of the school as a resource too. Regarding the welfare, both women and men will be equally enhanced. They have equally rights to attend education. The detail of the gender analysis is provided in annex 2.

7. Risk Management

According to the study of ACC, it is clearly identified that this project will face some difficulties resulting from a number of issues which might reduce the effectiveness of the project’s goal and objectives. Therefore, this project has been designed to overcome these difficulties and provide a solution to the risks which might occur during the project implementation.

7.1 Environment risk

Some risks might exist during the project implementation. For instance, the environment risk in terms of flooding might occur during the project implementation which might effect on the infrastructure of the building or projection’s functions might prolong. A research by a natural disaster office shows that the flooding in this village rarely happens. However, the local community advises that flooding might occur during a raining season. Given to this circumstance, an emergency mitigation plan has been developed to prevent the school infrastructure.

7.2 Administrative risk

Due to a poor stakeholder perceptions, it is anticipated that the relevant stakeholders particularly, the local leaders, local community, and relevant government’s institutions might not cooperate or work well with the project team. They might be reluctant to participate due to limitation of their staff, and their time and commitment. Importantly, they will not provide their resources or time without getting any benefits. For instance, the district education department might not send their staff or representative to participate in the project’s campaign or meeting since this project location is in the remote area. Thus, ACC will refer the previous project design activities and implementation to study on the issues which might occur with the stakeholder’s participation.

Due to a geographic distance from business area, the unavailability of school materials and equipments supply is of medium concern. Therefore, ACC will have an advanced dialogue with the district education department to contact and assign the school materials and equipments’ suppliers which will be available for students by January, 2009. Similarly, the unavailability of project supplies and construction materials might not deliver to the village in time. Hence, ACC needs to contact with the construction companies in advance and establishes an agreement with them in order to deliver project supplies and equipments for school construction by January, 2009. Regarding the selection of the contractor for school construction, ACC has identified that it might not have a delay in processing this selection since they will have a tender committee to manage the process of tendering. They also experienced with a similar cases from previous project approval.

7.3 Social risk

It is also of medium concern that a low participation of the local community involved in the project’s activities due to a lack of awareness and education, and poor living condition. Most of them might not be interested in participating in the project educational campaign or the project activities since they almost cannot afford themselves for their living. Therefore, ACC needs to work with the local leaders and provincial and district education department to conduct the consultations, community’s involvement, and the community participation’s importance to assist the local community, individuals, and households to better understand the importance of education for their children in order to improve their living standard and the community for a long term goal.

7.4 Budget risk

Although, there is a low level of approving project budget from the sponsors, however, ACC experiences that it might occur. Therefore, the project team needs to assure that the prior approval of project budget needed to be done in advance.
Since there might have some difficulties or risks during the project implementation which might impact on the project’s achievement and effectiveness. Thus, some foreseeing risks have been identified and a mitigation plan is planned to minimize and resolve the risks. Further details of the risk matrix is enclosed with annex 4.

8. Sustainability

When the project finishes, AAC is concerned about maintaining the effectiveness of the project’s goal and objectives. The literacy level and school enrolment rate might decrease in this community. The local community might less focus on educating their children and the relevant stakeholders are less involving in this community. So, only the government and local leader’s role are significantly important for sustaining, developing, and increasing the literacy level and school enrolment rate in this community.

8.1 The roles of local leaders

The local leaders such as village representative, youth leader, and women leader are able to sustain and maintain the effectiveness of the project’s goal and objectives when the project finishes. Since they have been provided some training on the children’s rights, awareness and the importance of education prior to the education campaign, therefore, they can use their knowledge to lobby the local community particularly, parents, children and villagers to understand more on their children’s rights on access to education and how this could change their children’s future. Thus, they have the important roles to promote and deliver education’s services for their community. However, the village representatives, youth leader, and women leader need to work closely and regularly to maintain and sustain the effectiveness of this project. For example, they can set up a quarterly schedule for meeting to follow up any activities on promoting the awareness and importance of education for the children. Thus, sustainability of this project will be maintained, the literacy level rate and school enrolment rate will keep increase respectively.

8.2 The roles of government

The government has a major responsibility and power for sustaining and maintaining the project’s effectiveness because they can strengthen the education through the provincial and district education department to be responsible for improving the education in this community. Since the school is available, they could provide further supports or facilities either through the provincial and district education department. For instance, they can conduct further training for the local leaders and promote an educational campaign for the local community to keep them informed about the importance of education. To maintain the awareness, the government can endorse the relevant education departments in this village to have a regular monitoring and promotion of education. Moreover, the government and its counterparts need to take into account to the remote and rural areas to eradicate poverty and increase the opportunities for all the people to attend education.

Hence, the government and local leaders have significant roles in maintaining and sustaining the outcome of this project. Particularly, MOEYS could provide intensive supports to the provincial and district education department to keep improving and enhancing the awareness of education and also provide the school material resources since they have a legitimate power to implement the innovative education intervention. Thus, the literacy level and school enrolment rate will be increased, and the poverty will be reduced. Thus, the living conditions will be improved in this community in the future.

9. Monitoring and Evaluation
9.1 Monitoring

Project monitoring is crucial to make sure that the project implementation and guideline are carried out as planned whether the goal and objectives of the project have been achieved. So, the project monitoring has been divided into two stages as follows.
First, the monitoring and evaluation team of the project will monitor the implementation process of the project whether the implementation activities have been carried out by the project guideline and procedures. The monitoring should be undertaken before and during the project is implemented and form the monitoring and evaluation system base. It is so important that if any issues come up during the project implementation, the team would be able to identify the problems and to recommend or advise if any changes needed to be done during the project implementation. So, that the rest of the project implementation process and activities could be directed or amended to meet the overall goal and objectives of the project. For example, if there is a low participation of the local community to participate in the educational campaign, they need to find out what is the weakness of campaign. It might lack of communication between the local leaders and the local community or the message is not spread over the whole community.

Second, the team will conduct a field monitoring to monitor on the impact of the educational campaign which has been promoted to the local community. The purpose is to make sure that the local community, parents, villagers are aware of the importance of education for their children. This monitoring will be conducted for a semester base. So, there will be an increase in the primary school enrolment. Thus, the literacy level will be improved and the living condition of this village will be enhanced for the long term goal. After the monitoring, the team needs to come up with the reports for the project team and donors; the World Bank and ADB, and MOEYS.

9.2 Evaluation

The evaluation process can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the project’s implementation process to improve the future of the project design (Bamberger & Hewitt, 1986). Thus, this evaluation will study the outcome of a project; an increase in literacy level and an increase in primary school enrolment rate which would lead the local community to reducing the poverty and improving the living standard in the long term plan. The evaluation will be conducted semesterly by the monitoring and evaluation team, which will be held at the end of each year. It is important that the donors, district education department, and local leaders will be invited to participate in the evaluation meeting. The purpose of the evaluation is to make sure that the project implementation and activities are abided by the project guideline whether the goal and objectives of this project is highly achieved. The evaluation mechanism is based on the quarterly, yearly report, primary and secondary sources, and survey to evaluate the project’s outcome and the increase in primary enrolment rate. Importantly, the interview will be conducted with relevant stakeholders such as the local community, local people, village chief, and pupils to get better interaction of the outcome of the project and from the expression of the community. It is one of the most important parts of the evaluation, since it is most reliable for evaluation and assessment in order to have further judgment.

10. Personnel

The engagement of all stakeholders in various stages is significant to make this project run smoothly. Therefore, the project management designs to have all the relevant stakeholders actively involve from the early stage to the end of the project such as preparation, implementation, evaluation and monitoring. Thus, three main teams have been identified such as advisory team, management team, and implementation team. First, the main role of advisory team is to liaise with the major stakeholders’ representatives on the consultation, advice, and guideline for the whole process of this project. Therefore, this team should be attended by the representatives from each major stakeholder such as donors, MOEYS, MOH, MOPW, MOEF, MOE, and LL. Second, the management team plays an important role for taking fully responsibilities for the project management and implementation. This team will work together to ensure that the project activities are followed by the project guidelines and procedures. Third, the responsibilities of implementation team mainly involve in carrying out the activities of the project and ensure that the project activities are abided by the project guideline and procedures.

11. Cost and Benefit Analysis

Cost and benefit analysis is a useful tool to analyze relevant expenditures of the whole project including project preparation, implementation, and evaluation cost. It estimates the benefits and costs of the equivalent money value for the projects (Thayer, 2008). The main purpose of this tool is to minimize the cost but efficiently achieve the goal and objectives of the project. Some major considerations on a high cost are the expenses on staff, administration, transportation and project activities. Since this village is located in the remote and rural area, the management cost and administrative cost are highly expensive. For example, the project staffs are reluctant to join the project team in that area due to the distance and infrastructure unless high salary is provided. Regarding the construction and material cost it is estimated that it is not high due the current market situation and it is officially estimated and used by MOEYS which they normally spends this amount of funds to build a new primary school with 5 rooms. However, it is also advantageous that the project activities implementation is low expense since there will be more local communities, local people are happy to contribute their time and strength and join this project, particularly during the project campaign. Thus, there is a small amount of expense on these activities such as providing some drinks.

12. Budget Summary

The total expense of the whole project is estimated USD 296,200 (two hundred ninety six and two hundred thousands US dollars) for two-year plan commencing from January, 2009 to December, 2010. USD 139,650 is estimated to expend on the building construction materials including bricks, stones, sands, et cetera. USD 84,000 expends on the project management and staffs. USD 68,550 will expend on the administration cost such as office rent and purchasing the office equipment for the project team. The cost of the campaign is less compared to the other expenses which cost about USD 4,000. The fund of this project will be sourced from the WB, ADB and other educational institutions. Further detail of the budget summary is attached in annex 5.

(By Bong Angkeara)

Malaysia: Halfway to 2020 Plan

2014-03-28T08:42:00.000+07:00

Halfway through its first century of independence and halfway to 2020 plan which is expected towards becoming a developed country by 2020 due to its booming economic growth. The average growth rate is about 6.1 per cents and its GDP per capita was double to USD 15,385 by 2008. Notably, Malaysia has an impressive current account surplus of 99.3 billion Ringgit equivalents to USD 31 billion (Richard, 2006).
The growth in manufacturing, agriculture, and services are significantly bringing Malaysia forwards. The Malaysian electronic export is equivalent to nearly 47 per cents and agricultural commodities such palm oil and rubber contributing 8.6 per cents which leads to a surplus of USD 310 million. Given to its rapid economic growth during the past five years, Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi was satisfied with the achievements and the progress of its halfway in its vision 2020.

Despite a rapid economic growth, it is concerned that this plan might face the risks of getting stuck in the middle in term of great challenges and even more perilous and demanding in the global environments. The main issue in Malaysia Halfway to 2020 plan is a low investment rate. Therefore, this case paper intends to analyze this key issue and provide some new alternative options for the government to achieve the objectives of its vision 2020 plan.

Despite a positive economic growth, Malaysia has a negative investment rate due to its restrictions on openness to trade and investment in terms of government regulations. Comparing to the Asian countries such as China, India, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Malaysia has a lower rate of economic growth. For instance, China receives a huge amount of foreign direct investment which leads to an increase in growth rate in excess of 9 per cents in the past two decades. India became the fastest growing centre of information technology and outsourcing contributing to a growth of 8 per cents annually for the past six years. Exhibit 3 and 4 indicate a huge negative investment of Malaysia which is USD 14.5 billion leading to a decrease in the account surplus (pp. 12-13). According to Figure 1 and 2, Malaysia is similar to the Asian countries in terms of starting a business but considerably worse in terms of excessive regulation which leads to a decrease in investment (p. 9). Therefore, Malaysia might face economic slowdown if this problem is ignored.

To overcome the above issue, two alternative options are recommended to boost the economic growth: ongoing increase in savings and investment rates, and ongoing technological change and human capital accumulation to ensure the stability and enhancement of its economic growth. These options will strengthen the Malaysian economic growth fundamentals.

First, the Malaysian government should continue to increase a level of investment and reduce restrictions on openness to trade to boost an inflow of foreign direct investment. It is significant to keep ongoing increase in savings and investment which lead to an increase in capital stock and income per capita. The high level of inward foreign direct investment leads to an increase in the capital stock and formation which contributes more to the Malaysian economic growth. Additionally, the transparency and consistency of the government policies should be treated for the openness to trade and competitiveness. Thus, it will boost the industrialized sector and enhance an increase in manufacturing, construction and services. For instance, the government’s surplus savings and capital should be used to channel into investments.

Second, ongoing technological change and human capital accumulation significantly boost the productivity and total productivity leading to an economic growth (Helpman 1994, p. 55). Although, the growth of output increases to 6.3 per cents in 2007, it is expected that the growth will decrease at 5.5 per cents in 2008 due to a global turndown. Notably, the Malaysian total factor productivity of more than 2 per cents annually is significant for boosting its economy apart from the growth of labor and capital inputs. For this reason, by continuing the technological change and human capital accumulation will enhance the total factor productivity and could sustain the economic growth.

Although, both two alternative options above are significant to take into accounts, it is preferably suggested that the most significant option to deal with the above issue is option one: Malaysia should increase the level of investment and reduce restrictions on openness to trade to boost an inflow of foreign direct investment. Exhibit 3 and 4 indicate the Malaysian investment was hugely negative USD 14.5 billion which leads to a decrease in their account surplus. Therefore, the government should take into account to further step their investment rates. However, increasing the level of investment alone does not exert an independent positive effect on growth, the openness to trade and human capital development in particular is needed to be tied to investment (Ventura 1997, p. 58). For this reason, the government needs to challenge more with the Asian Countries such as China and India. If they do not improve the weakness of its investment, it would clearly decline as China and India will take more foreign direct investment. At the same time, education and training should be enhanced and government regulation on trade and investment should be simplified to provide for both domestic and foreign investors an opportunity for further investment. As a result, Malaysia would be able to sustain and enhance its economic growth, and even actively compete with the global markets.

Finally, Malaysia has a remarkable economic growth. They could continue to forge ahead with their economic policy towards the achievement of vision 2020 plan. Given to its current account surplus and strong economic growth, Malaysia has clearly stayed on the course of growth. Although, it is concerned that the plan might get stuck in the middle, their economic trend indicates positive growth. However, they need to challenge more on investment, which is suggested in option one above, in order to sustain and boost the economic growth, and seize the opportunities in the next decade.

(Author: Bong Angkeara)

The opportunities and challenges to the WTO accession: the case of Cambodia

2014-03-28T08:37:00.000+07:00

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world. The government has deployed many efforts to reintegrate itself into the international economy since the signing of the Paris Peace Accord in 1991. Following this accord, the government's strategies aim to open its economic and trade policies to boost its economy and development, which intends to reduce poverty. As part of this strategy, Cambodia became 148th member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2004 approved at the Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico (Simon & Carlos, 2005). Accession to WTO aims to foster free and fair international trade into the world markets, which is believed to accelerate its domestic economic, legal and institutional reforms to create stable business environments and attract more foreign direct investment (FDI). However, being a member of WTO means that most of external trade barriers will be removed. In this context, the accession of Cambodia to the WTO might be exceptionally beneficial for the country but it also poses great challenges for the country as well (EIC, 2003).

Therefore, the main objectives of this paper aim to highlight the opportunities and challenges facing Cambodia. This paper divides into two sections. Section one discusses three main opportunities of WTO accession: first, access to the world markets; second, access to dispute settlement mechanisms for trade issues and non-discrimination; third, improve better governance and credibility. Section two discusses four key challenges of WTO accession: first, commit in legal and judicial system reforms; second, compete in global markets; third, protect trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS); fourth, forgo high tariff on agriculture products and protect small farmers.

First, by accession to WTO, Cambodia can integrate its market access to the world economy, which may result in higher exports to the foreign markets and boost FDI inward for the country. This is the substantial milestones not only for the Cambodian economy but for all the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), which seek to leverage the benefits of trade. By this accession, Cambodia is treated by all the WTO³ members as a most-favoured nation (MFN), which cannot be discriminated against unfairly according to the principles and rules underlying the trading system. This provides superior market access in a wide range of products and a wide range of countries. For instance, the garment industry⁴ is one of the Cambodian key industries, which are the powerful stimulus to the Cambodian development. By this accession, Cambodia could protect its garment industry after the export quotas removal under the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA) arrangements, which are applicable to the WTO members. After the removal, all exports, especially those to the United States (US) markets, will be subject to a high import tariff (EIC, 2003). For instance, about 50 percent of the garment exports have been delivered to the foreign markets, particularly the US. Thus, by accession to WTO could help to secure a lower tariff rate for the LDCs like Cambodia. Indeed, without a WTO membership, it could be difficult for the Cambodian garment export industries to cope competitively with the normal US tariff regime, particularly, after the quota system is removed. This means that a high import tariff imposed by the US might ensure a quick collapse of the non-competitive Cambodian garment industries.

From these observations, becoming a WTO member is very important for Cambodia to accelerate its economic development process and to raise the living standards of the people through market access to the world markets. Importantly, it also sends a strong signal to trade and investment partners about the future directions of Cambodia, which could attract more FDI inwards. Yet, it does not mean that integration into the global markets access brings higher exports and FDI inwards for the country. Many developed countries still maintain high tariff peaks barriers to protect policy, which close markets for the Cambodian export products.

Second, by accession to WTO, Cambodia can join the WTO dispute settlement mechanism⁵, which is an effective system for dealing with the disputes of international trade. This mechanism is widely recognized as one of the most critical and successful features of trade regime and is very crucial for offering security, safety and predication to the economic issues of the member countries. With suitable dispute settlement mechanisms under the WTO agreements, it would support small and vulnerable economies like Cambodia from any violations, which might be made by the big markets, particularly, from the developed countries. This mechanism is also considered as an important factor in upgrading the rights and obligations of the members under the agreements. This factor is very important for Cambodia to ensure current investment and attract more foreign direct investment for the country. Thus, by accession to this mechanism, the WTO members can shine the spotlight of international legal scrutiny on the protectionist practices of their trading partners. This means that it is significant for the developing countries like Cambodia, which typically lack the market size to exert much influence through more power-oriented trade diplomacy.

In addition, Cambodia can fully benefit from the rights accorded to all members under the WTO agreements such as non-discrimination by other WTO members known as MFN, and potential increase in FDI. For instance, the developed countries provide market opportunities for goods from the developing countries like Cambodia, with better terms and zero percent tariff rates, which could promote more investments, and thus create more local employments in the country.

On the other hand, Cambodia faces the concept of bad governance and weakness of the government, that is, lack of control, corruption and illegal monopolies, which would discourage and threaten the foreign investors. This signal could affect on the trade environment in the country (WTO, 2003).

Therefore, by accession to WTO offers the opportunities for Cambodia to set up a legal framework, which would improve better governance and credibility. It is significant for the economy of the country to introduce its credibility in the commercial policy, which is a consequence of adherence to WTO rules. Better governance and credibility is very vital for both domestic producers and exporters from other countries wishing to access the economy’s markets in Cambodia. Thus, by strengthening better governance and enhancing credibility would significantly improve the confidences of the foreign investor.

However, by accession to WTO, it does not mean a panacea⁶. Simultaneously, it will also bring the challenges to the Cambodian government as well. One of the most challenging tasks facing Cambodia is to make its commitments in legal and judicial system reforms such as the establishment of a specialised commercial court and the enforcement of rule of law as part of its accession to WTO (Bernard, et al, 2002). For instance, 47 laws and regulations are needed to fulfil the requirements of the WTO membership and needed to be passed by 2006 (EIC, 2003). This means that the government needs to implement committed reforms to align its domestic institutions and policies with the disciplines of WTO. Indeed, the government also needs to re-establish itself as an open-market and democratic country. Particularly, the social justices, human development, and the rules of human rights, which are the most immediate and important tasks for the government, are needed to be promoted to enhance the investment for reconstruction and development, and reform the central institutions of macro-economic management. For example, according to a report of the World Bank (WB), the CamControl and customs office are one of the most corrupt government agencies (2003). Therefore, if these institutions are not well managed, it could damage the Cambodian economy, which increase unemployment and make the Cambodian people poorer.

However, if all of these reforms are carried out properly, it would stimulate related economic reforms, which will be conducive to improving the investor confidences and hence it could attract more foreign investments for the country, which leads to the development of the country as whole.

Moreover, another primary challenging tasks facing Cambodia is to make local industries and private sectors more competitive. It would open the foreign markets for Cambodian exports as well as opening the domestic market for imports. In this situation, the Cambodian local product sectors might be difficult for competing with the foreign producers since its production cost is not competitive. That is for such reason as poor infrastructure, high energy prices and corruption in the country. For instance, the Cambodian agriculture products are not competitive with the agriculture products in the neighbouring countries due to high trade costs, which involve some unregulated practices in the exporting process. For this reason, the local industries and private sectors face difficulties to compete with the foreign investors.

In addition, the agreements of TRIPS are needed to be fully implemented while accession to the WTO. Therefore, the implementation of intellectual property rights, which intends to protect authors, inventors, brands and names against imitation and reproduction, could affect the Cambodian education and human resource development. For example, the pirated compact disk, video compact disk, and copied books, unlicensed films might no longer exist in Cambodia due to the pressures of this accession. Thus, a high price of the original books and related educational materials with copyright cannot be afforded by the Cambodian citizens in such a poor country like Cambodia, which the majority of the population earning is less than one dollar per day. For this reason, the enforcement of intellectual property rights law would take away the livelihood of thousands, and cut off many from educational and entertainment materials.

The Cambodian agriculture also plays a major role in the Cambodian economy. More than 80 percent of the workforce is in the agricultural sectors and most of them are small and poor farmers. By accession to WTO, the government needs to take specific attention given to the impacts of this accession, particularly on agriculture with a focus on small farmers (Benedicte, 2004). There will be of a risk of social crisis if the impact is not mitigated. It might be useful for implementing a price policy to protect the farmers’ income under the constraints of WTO. In addition, under the WTO membership, Cambodia basically needs to forgo its rights to use high tariffs and farm subsidies in the agriculture products. Some of the requirements, which are imposed on Cambodia, go far beyond what the US and the European Union (EU) commits themselves in the negotiations (Oxfam, 2003). Thus, the Cambodian government limits its tariff to an average rate of about 30% for agriculture products and 20% for industrial products. Cambodia also agrees not to subsidize its agricultural exports, although the other least developed countries are not required to undertake such commitments. However, this provision could effectively seal off Cambodia’s right under the agreement on agriculture (AOA) to introduce export subsidies on any agricultural product in the future (Cham, 2004).

Finally, by accession to the WTO could be exceptionally beneficial for the country but it also poses great challenges for the country as well. By this accession, the WTO offers several opportunities for Cambodia. That is; accessions to foreign markets; accession to dispute settlement mechanisms for trade issues and non-discrimination, and improving better governance and credibility. It is the substantial milestone for the Cambodian economy and an effective lever to promote trade liberalization and market access in the world markets, and also sends a strong signal to trade and investment partners about future directions of Cambodia’s investment. With suitable dispute settlement mechanisms under the WTO agreements, it would support small and vulnerable economies like Cambodia from any violations made by the big markets from the developed countries. This mechanism is very crucial for offering security, safety and predication to the economic issues of the member countries. Cambodia also has the opportunities to improve its own governance and credibility for the foreign investors. Therefore, all of these opportunities would lead to an overall economic growth, which is believed to lead to reduce poverty in the country.

Yet, matching the opportunities and facing the challenges, the Cambodian governments have significant roles to play under the WTO agreements. By participating in these global economies, Cambodia needs to face several challenges to fully take the advantages of this accession. That is, Cambodia needs substantive legal and judicial system reforms and competing in global markets. The government needs to speed up its legal and judicial system reforms to transform Cambodia to a country governed by the rule of law, and protect trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), and forgo high tariff on agriculture products and protect small farmers. Therefore, the Cambodian government strongly believe that by receiving these opportunities and facing these challenges would significantly accelerate its domestic economic, legal and institutional reforms to create stable business environments and attract more FDI for a long term goal of the country’s development as a whole.
(Writer: Bong Angkeara)