Peosamnang Soth
In This Section
Peosamnang Soth picture
Peosamnang Soth

Pursat, Cambodia 

WHAT IS YOUR SPECIFIC AREA OF INTEREST IN YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY? 

Peer advocacy, Research advocacy and Social media advocacy.

WHY IS YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY IMPORTANT TO YOU?

Youth mental health advocacy is very important to me. Because, as I am in the age of youth group, I know how pressure in Cambodian youth have faced now. And it is very important to start working on this sector in order to advocate more and more to raise awareness about their mental well-being.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE MENTAL HEALTH IN YOUR COMMUNITY?

As a part of LGBTIQ+ community in Cambodia, I would describe that the mental health is a very crucial issue which we did not really aware to talk about and they don’t want to talk about it at well while they have faced this issue very frequently because of the social discrimination and many issues for LGBTIQ+ people. 


PROPOSED FELLOWSHIP PROJECT

As we all know, being the minority voice is not easy. We need to build our voices stronger and make the common voice for the positive change in the future. To achieve this goal, we need to have supportive spaces for our community. 
I would address the youth mental health challenge of the very tight space for the freedom of expression of who they are, what they are facing and how they can be supported as vulnerable youth (LGBTIQ+ youths) in a society which has societal norm, gender stereotypes and the complicated democracy country. 

For addressing this challenge, I propose two projects:

  1. Developing an online platform for raising awareness and call for action
  2. Creating a safe space for LGBTIQ+ youth and their closest friend to share, listen, and learn from each other. 

I want to make sure our LGBTIQ+ youth have a supportive environment for them to be who they are and they can share whatever they want safely in this space. For the online platform, I might run social media campaigns to address the related issues which link to the mental health for LGBTIQ+ youths, advocating for inclusiveness by sharing about SOGIESC and introducing some inclusiveness words. Just changing the way people use the languages can help people to feel more included.