Cambodian Tertiary Scholarship Program’s (CTSP) university students have been promised many new and exciting opportunities including internships, volunteering posts, work place exposure visits, talks on the application process for large companies in Cambodia, training on writing CVs and job search techniques, mentoring support and some students have even been offered paid employment.

These promises have come as a result of an after work dinner and presentation KAPE organized on 6th June 2013 for banks, Micro-finance institutions, businesses and NGOs based in Kampong Cham, and a similar event organized by the Asia Foundation in Phnom Penh last month on 8th May. As well as potential future employers and mentors, some of the CTSP scholarship students, KAPE the Asia Foundation, who jointly manages the project joined both events.

CTSP students come from poor and vulnerable backgrounds and prior to joining the program often have little or no exposure to professional work environments, lack confidence and are unable to use computers and have not had opportunities to gain English language skills. This limits their ability to carry out research for their studies and their future employment opportunities. KAPE and The Asia Foundation have provided computer lessons, English lessons, and other work focused support and helped them to gain confidence, team work and leadership skills through the setting up of clubs and career development opportunities.

This new, additional support offered by our private and NGO partners, is very exciting as it will give opportunities for students to gain real work place confidence and help ensure that all 115 of our scholarship students are able to find jobs on completion of their 4 year bachelor degrees.

Following presentations by the KAPE Executive Director and the CTSP Program Manager and offers of support and advice given by the participants, the student representatives were really happy to get the chance to talk informally to experienced, senior staff members of potential future employers.

The CTSP project is jointly managed by the Asia Foundation and KAPE, through funding from the Shirin Pandju Merali Foundation and a number of individual donors.