CCF's Community Leadership Program is a progressive course designed for students who are smart, articulate and charismatic – young adults who are demonstrably natural leaders, regardless of their education status or school grade.

With its emphasis on community intervention and social activism, the goal of this program is to prepare our older students to enter Cambodian society with the empathy, knowledge and ambition to enact change and to create a positive community network within their emerging generation.

Students here thrive in an environment that fosters independent thought and encourages tolerance and self-expression. But the Community Leadership Program strives, in particular, to motivate students to grow as humanitarians, and to further their knowledge and understanding of problems and creative solutions beyond academic curriculum.

CCF believes that true capacity building must start with the individual. Students begin this program with vigorous, hands-on internships at our Steung Meanchey Community Center. Under the guidance of our senior staff, students are assigned case families to assist and monitor as they learn to detect problems and to devise solutions. As accepted members of the community where they once lived, these young adults have rare access to information that can help connect families to local resources, including safe drinking water, free medical care and protective services.

The knowledge and abilities our students are developing as they guide these individuals through social and domestic situations is proving an invaluable foundation for their future roles as local and regional leaders.