Cambodian Youth Development Center (CYD-Center), or Idea Library, launched its second “One Book One Person” campaign to contribute to promoting reading and improving Cambodian youth reading capacity.

Idea Library founder, Venerable Reom Namchheav, 29, from Prey Veng, said, “I created this campaign to motivate youth in Cambodia to read books. I strongly believe that social development can be achieved through reading books as a good habit.”

Namchheav added that he has a lot of experience related to reading and social affairs from reading books, and he believes that the beneficial outcome of this campaign is youth themselves as a main pillar to help society in the next generations.

The Idea Library was founded in 2018. The library also created four programs, which include mental health education, humanitarian meal packages, humanitarian social programs, and life-relief-reading programs.

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He told Kiripost, “In 2022, we also made our debut at the ninth Cambodian Book Fair with a book campaign called “One Person, One Book.” With charities contributing more than the expected outcome, it’s a strong motivation to push me to continue this campaign.”

Namchheav said that the campaign will support youths who live in pagodas, schools, rural areas, and ethnic groups who lack support for books and other materials. After they collect from the campaign, they will donate these books to that area, so there will be a book of reading and cultivating young people to fall into favor of reading even more.

There will be an effective library when the books are provided. Even though they will be small, they will still help youths, including providing a good place for them to study because the library is usually quiet. Then it can be a place to connect people with the same interest, so they can make more friends there. Therefore, a library isn’t just a stock to keep books, but it’s a place to create knowledge, he said.

“Additionally, we also have a number of organizations that partner with our Idea Library. Our partners always support and promote every activity or program that our library has begun,” he said in an interview.

At the same time, the campaign is calling for volunteers to support and promote social communities because if the project can get many books, they can donate to those small libraries in the rural areas.

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Also, all volunteers themselves can get a few benefits from the campaign, including the opportunity to request a book to their school's library, training for legal and foreign language courses, creating self-relationships, and freely contributing to all the activities of the Idea Library.

The Buddhist monk and library founder said, “Some people love to read the books, but they don’t have them, and some have many books, but they never read, so they donate to our campaign to help other people who lack support.”

The project has participated in creating many small libraries that house more than 100 books in the provinces. Also, they have provided and supported some existing libraries with many books on topics that include education, Buddhism, entertainment, motivation, and a few are English books, he said excitedly.

“We have done this in many provinces, such as Prey Veng, Kandal, Pursat, Koh Kong. Recently, we’ve just donated 300,000 books to a library in Takeo province,” he added.

He believes that when youths are good at reading, they will read faster and better comprehend what they have read. They also tend to enjoy reading more because of their effectiveness and heightened confidence, they pick up a piece to read and set clear goals before they even start reading.

He explained that good readers have a better attention span because they’re more “present” when reading. They engage with whatever they’re reading and tend to ask themselves questions as they read. Fluency is the ability to read quickly and understand just as well. Poor readers can’t read fast and usually have poor or slow comprehension, but good readers can.