Distribution Initiative in Cambodia

Greetings from Phnom Penh, Cambodia!

This is Natalie Le, project manager for the first joint effort between AIESEC and Global Text to promote free open textbooks to developing countries. It is quite ironic that everybody on the web knows how to download textbooks for free but the ones who need those most are totally oblivious to the amount of knowledge and resources that they can obtain at no cost. I’m talking, of course, about students in countries like Cambodia where there is such a thirst for knowledge but the local bookstores are not able to deliver.

To bridge this gap, we have decided to launch a pilot initiative to work with universities here in Cambodia to create awareness among professors and students alike. We are working with universities to organize seminars to demonstrate to the school community how they can do research, find materials for courses, and further enrich their learning experiences by accessing Open Educational Resources in general and Global Text in particular. Simultaneously, we work with professors to integrate these free textbooks into the curriculum and work with librarians to link the resources into the school’s web system.

It’s wonderful to have acquired all these free textbooks and we are on our way to better make full use of them by developing an effective distribution system.