Miss Chourn Soa's Success

Miss Chourn Soa Yin is 21 years old. She finished Grade 8. Family problems made further financing for education impossible. Fortunately, her Commune Council had just completed a VSTP training plan with the Battambang Provincial Training Center, now the Polytechnic Institute of Battambang Province based on skills that could be taught to out-of-school youth to help them improve family income. With her family depending on her, she needed to move quickly and she joined the training.

Sewing cannot be learned quickly as the expectation now is the combination of the traditional with the more modern fashion. Soa Yin joined the center based training program where she worked hard for 6 months combining the theory with daily practice making modern style for young ladies. She had to drop out for a while to help at home and sell some oranges to help her family, but Ministry of Labour Vocational Training Provincial Training Center' have an adult learning orientation and understand the realities of supporting families. So, after a short while, she was able to come back to the Center, pick up where she left off, and finish the course.

Financing a sewing machine was not a problem. She got capital from a relative living in the USA ($200) for a sewing machine and materials. From her aunt, $200 to build the shop, and she was off and running. Her shop is at the land of a neighbor who rented this to her for $5 per month. Per month, she started to earn around $140. In fact, every day she gives her family 5,000 Riel for food. Graduates like Soa can eventually strengthen the enterprise based training component of Voucher Skills Training Program (VSTP).

Soa Yin is now very happy with the new income from her self employment, because it helps her live better than before and enable her to have some savings. In the future, she would like to expand her business by buying more machines for her work because she now has many customers. What is clear is that VSTP opens windows not just for the trainee, but also for the community around her.

Reported by Tung Sopheap

VSTP Consultant