“Welcome back” was a word I saw on the dashboard of the Technovation program when I logged in. It reminded me of an old memory in 2017 that was the first time participating in the program and being in the junior division. At the same time, this was the first time my team got selected for the finalist team and competed with different teams from different countries around the world, in San Francisco. For this year 2020, it was the first time I came back to this battle and was in the senior division. This time is a new game, tasted, missions, and competitors also. My team and I would go together to fight for it. 
The five members came together to create a team called Initial with an app named Chamkar. We took many weeks to brainstorm ideas. It was hard to think about new ideas. Though, we attempted to list down all of our problems. After, we spent some time discussing and researching, which we decided to work on the quality of vegetables. We wanted to make sure it’s a real problem that happened to Cambodian citizens. We conducted surveys with people in Phnom Penh and provinces by interview and sent out the form. We found out that 80% of 134 people lack awareness of the quality of their vegetables that they eat daily. We came back and looked through all the data and had a talk with one of our seniors, Sammang Noun, and our mentors outside of Liger. Later, we came up with a solution by creating an app. Chamkar is an app that provides safe/ organic vegetables to customers. We’re working closely with our stakeholders are Agriculture Research & Supply center and Green Gold. In the future, we also want to expand the market more to different provinces.
Challenging, always staying with us all the time. When there was a problem, I felt stressed and upset. Especially the unexpected thing that happened is COVID-19. It is a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold, according to the WHO. We have to go back to our home town. Even though we were far away from each other, we still stay in touch every day to finish our work and prepare for the summation of the global.
We still have a national pitch in Cambodia, but we did it by Zoom. Our team got selected to present for the National Pitch among 80 teams in both divisions. I was proud of my teammate, even though we did not win first place for the National Pitch, but we never gave up and appreciated all our hard work. We were selected for the semi-final team among many teams from different countries. All of this result came from our determination, collaboration, and opportunism.
It’s a great chance to participate in this program. I learned a lot throughout this journey. I could explore and get experiences in editing the pitch video. It was the first time for me to step into a new skill. There would be some challenges, but I’m good with it if I have a problem in which I would seek help and learn along the way. Even though, in the time of Covid-19, we still worked hard and made the best we can. Last but not least, I want to say I enjoy learning this program.
Watch this video to understand more about our app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spwvGr5_ZNM
