So What Were You Doing in Cambodia?
Since returning from Cambodia, we have been asked this question frequently. Putting our experience into a short response – or a blog post – is challenging! We spent two weeks in Cambodia, with the focus of our first international FIELD expedition being a three day retreat in the beach town of Kep. The 13 women participants had been selected by an advisory committee comprised of four Cambodian women leaders (our original goal was 15 but 2 had to drop out at the last minute). This group of women met the set requirements that included they are working in NGO’s, and all have demonstrated leadership abilities within their organizations. The majority of these women are at the early stages of their careers and under the age of thirty-five.
Our goals going into this leadership dialogue workshop were to not only give these women tools that would help them understand their unique leadership strengths, but to also facilitate the development of a community of women leaders in Phnom Penh. We will be going back 3 times over the next 2 years to work with this same group, with a focus on different aspects of what it means to be a woman in leadership.
A group of women in Canada donated money so we could treat these women to dinner.
We were so privileged to listen as they shared with us and each other through an exercise where they drew a map of their leadership experiences. Other explorations included taking them through a process of discovering their temperament based on the MBTI; an experiential activity using local fruit to discover individual values; and a coaching activity done on the beautiful beach in Kep.
Going into a cross-cultural situation is humbling. Our personal discovery – and we are all learners on this expedition – was the power of Dialogue Education. At the core of any dialogue is active listening. We listened and learned from one another. We put our confidence in the wisdom in the room.
So where do we go from here? In the next six months before we return we will be focused on building Communities of Practice. We have formed an online private discussion group for these women, scheduled regular monthly Skype calls, created peer accountability groups and other tasks to keep this community learning and growing together until we return in August. We will be hosting a couple of information evenings to talk about how you can get involved in supporting the leadership development of women in Cambodia. If you are interested please send an email to kpetersen@thefieldcollaborative.com
This post was written collaboratively by Sandy Reynolds and Karen Petersen. Any grammatical errors should be attributed to Karen.
The FIELD Collaborative 