Increasing Political Participation from Cambodia to California

Savina Sirik, a Community Solutions leader from Cambodia, recently began her work at the League of Women Voters of California. Back home, Sirik works at the Documentation Center of Cambodia. The Center informs the public about the ongoing tribunals focusing on the Khmer Rouge and the genocide of the 1970s. IREX asked Sirik about the links between her extensive work in community engagement in Cambodia and her current practical experiences promoting political participation in the US.

What do you do at the Documentation Center of Cambodia?

I work with local community members to engage them in the Khmer Rouge tribunal process. I select some community leaders to receive training on legal proceedings and attend trial hearings, and they go back and organize their own meetings with community members, where they spread information about the trials, legal proceedings, and the particular leader on trial. It’s important for community members to be engaged because they are the main actors and beneficiaries of this process. Having them witness the trials is one way of healing their suffering and of promoting justice and democracy in Cambodia, which is still in process. I also think that their engagement in this process will help engage them in other political processes and decision making.

What are your goals as a Community Solutions Program leader?

My broad goal is to get the community engaged as much as possible in the political sphere because many people in Cambodia today have a tradition following their leaders rather than expressing their own voice. I want community members to be active in political decisions. Being in this program is helping me to gain an understanding of how to engage citizens more in the political sphere, and I can also explore how transparency and accountability issues are practiced here. This program is helping me connect with experts and people working in this field so I can learn and provide them with my insights.

What does your work entail at the League of Women Voters of California?

I'm working to help with the local election process in San Francisco through the League's education and outreach program. I am attending the training for speakers who explain issues of ballot measures and propositions to local communities. I also help research the propositions so that League members can write a simple pros-and-cons guide for local communities. We also work with all candidates, helping them create their priorities for upcoming elections. We put that information online so the candidate can communicate to voters and so they can communicate with the candidates.

How is this work similar to or different from your work in Cambodia?

It’s quite different, but I’m finding some areas in common. The education program of the League and its approach to local communities are similar to what I do at home when I go out and talk to people about legal proceedings. In the US, people have more access to communications so they can use the Internet to reach out to local communities. But back home, they don’t use that tool. We have used written tools, but the illiteracy rate is high so we use local village leaders in the community. Like the League, we use video to record forums, upload them, and screen them in the villages back home, even if we can’t put it online.

What’s one thing you’ve learned so far that you plan to take home?

Something I see here that has great benefits for the community, especially for those who have less access to information, is how the League serves as a bridge to connect people at the grassroots level with decision-makers. I want the Cambodian people to connect with those people who work for them, and to understand that policy is not just their business, it’s our business.

Have you been able to share your perspectives about Cambodia with your coworkers? If so, what have you shared?

I have a presentation on my work next week on Cambodia. I think people here generally know two things about Cambodia. One is the beautiful part of the history, the temples and kings, and they have also heard about the horrible part of history, the genocide. So I want to tell them about how Cambodians today think about the genocide and what they are doing to move forward with their lives. It is important that this information is spread to the world so that it will never happen again.

Community Solutions is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State and is implemented by IREX.