App-learning on the Khmer Rouge History

Location: Cambodia
Project Type: Project Partners

Bophana Centre has developed an application to educate school students on past violence of the Khmer Rouge History. This project will enable the centre to add videos and train teachers.

In Cambodia, many young Cambodians have very little knowledge about the horrors and atrocities of the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime. Additionally, their knowledge about the former Khmer Rouge members is very limited. Bophana Centre has developed a multi-media application, app-learning on the Khmer Rouge history (KR- App), to educate young people in Cambodia through school education. Bophana Centre will amplify the impact of existing KR-App by collecting testimonies from former Khmer Rouge members to add to our educational KR-App and by training 50 teachers across the country as trainers to support more teachers to use the app.

Overview

More than forty years after the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea ‘Khmer Rouge’ (1975-1979) regime, under which 1.7 million people died of hunger, disease or were executed, efforts to redress and reckon with Cambodia’s experiences of genocide and atrocity are ongoing. Today, people live with its legacies and receive limited educational engagements and exposure to the history of the genocide. In order to respond to the knowledge gap of young people, Bophana Centre has developed the KR-App that has innovative multimedia, validated and standardized information, and user-friendly learning tools. In addition to written information, the KR-App offers a wider platform that includes documentary films and videos of witnesses’ testimonies, photos, audio files, and numerous artworks. However, there is still very few former low level Khmer Rouge members’ testimonies included into the application. This project will record video testimonies of former low level Khmer Rouge members, add them to the KR-App and train teachers on how to teach multi-perspective history of the Khmer Rouge by using the updated KR-App.

The project aims:

To amplify the impact of existing KR-App to students and general users by producing video testimonies and including into the KR-App.
To provide a platform for former low level Khmer Rouge members to speak out to the Cambodian public, especially the younger generation, about their experiences during the Khmer Rouge.
To promote a multi-perspective teaching approach on past violence and to enhance the reconciliation process between former Khmer Rouge members and the Cambodian public.

In order to accomplish these objectives, Bophana Centre has a team to interview and record 12 testimonies of the former low level Khmer Rouge members in six different provinces and with the target of diverse low level positions during the Khmer Rouge. Those videos will add into the existing KR-App that has more 50 thousand users. Additionally, the centre will organize training workshop to train 50 teachers on using the newly produced video testimonies in their classrooms.