Having learned that most of the Cambodian youths have spent most of their time on entertaining programs, alcohol consumption, and paying little attention to sociopolitical developments after graduating from college, Ou Ritthy established a youth-led group called Politikoffee on July 2011. Politikoffee is derived from the terms “Politics and Coffee.”

Politikoffee gathers youth at a coffee shop every Saturday afternoon to drink coffee, not alcohol and talk politics, not entertaining programs. Politikoffee is a group of young enthusiastic, and tech-savvy Cambodian youth who love discussing socioeconomic, political developments, and democratization in Cambodia and the region. They are democracy-loving youth who genuinely care for their national interest.

Till now, we have more than 200 members who often come to join our discussion, and some 50 are active regular members who join Politikoffee every weekend. The number of members keeps growing. Besides the 200 members, we have around 400 other online youth who join the online discussion and have requested to be our members. However, as our policy, we accept those to be group members provided they have at least attended our face-to-face discussion once. Having more members involving in the forum, Ritthy in early 2013 invited three most active members to be Politikoffee co-founders- Ly Malin, Lach Vannak, and Chheng Channy. Politikoffee aims at cultivating “Liberal Democracy” in Cambodia through raising sociopolitical awareness and promoting a culture of discussion, debate, and challenge among youths, based on principles of national interest, solidarity and fraternity. We want to create a democratic political culture, which to our belief, behaviors of political participation are the starting point and stepping-stone to sharpen a new promising political perception for Cambodia. Pragmatically, in the Cambodian context, an informal way of political dialogue among youths and their peers is the most effective. We first started from political discussion, political debate, knowledge/skill-sharing from seniors and experts, and analytical writings.

Currently, among our active 200 political discussants. Having informed and learned from each other, these youths share and spread political and electoral information via social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. They have done the admirable jobs during the National Assembly election 2013 by becoming active citizen journalists to spread electoral irregularities and breaking news. We fearlessly and openly speak our mind as the fact that the Politikoffee forum is informally organized by peers group who get to know each well. Therefore, everything we say is outspoken, independent, open-minded, amiable, and responsible yet challenging and thought-provoking. We wish to see Politikoffee continues to play a more significant role in cultivating a democratic political culture in Cambodia. Also, we want to see the new generation of Cambodia perceiving politics not a threat to individuals’ lives but understanding politics as one of the most significant parts of life and the future of individuals and the nation. PLAN: To achieve this, in the short future, we want to own a coffee shop named “Politikoffee,” where politics, democracy, and coffee lovers meet up and discuss current political issues. Politikoffee Shop is designed to function as a one-stop service to provide Cambodian people and foreigners who come to visit, work or live in Cambodia with complete, up-to-date socioeconomic, political, electoral, social media and youth situations. By just spending one hour discussing and drinking a cup of coffee. We believe in political evolution, not revolution prevailing in Cambodia.

ACTIVITIES: We first welcome participants and provide weekly socioeconomic and political news briefing. Then we start our political discussion or debate we set several days ago. In case we have speaker, after update weekly news brief, the speaker begins sharing main ideas of the set topic for some 30 minutes, then the remaining two hours are for exchanging views and challenging. For the last four years, we have discussed, debated, and challenged.

Interestingly, from May 2014, we have initiated a Young Analyst program. Since then, what we have shared and discussed are put into analytical writing. GOAL: A democratic political culture prevails in Cambodia resulted from raising socio-economic, legal, and political awareness and improving the perception of discussion, debate, and challenge among youth. The responsible civic participation and socialization of childhood are the primary catalyst to transform Cambodia towards a better democratic system based on the principles of the rule of law, democratic governance, and sustainable development.