This spring, the Gephardt Institute for Public Service awarded the Gephardt Social Change Grant to Brown School MSW/MPH candidate Lindsey Horton and MSW/MBA candidate Kelly Scott. The funding supported their summer social entrepreneurship project designed to provide employment skills to young women in Cambodia.

Horton and Scott partnered with the Village Earth, an established NGO in Phnom Penh, to implement their “Employment for Education” project.  The project aimed to help young women gain part-time morning employment that would allow them to also attend school in the afternoon.  Horton and Scott developed an 8-week curriculum to help students with English language and job skills such as housekeeping, cooking, hygiene and nutrition, cross cultural communication, and finances.  Students who successfully completed the lessons and demonstrated maturity had the opportunity to be matched with possible employers in the expatriate community.

Twenty-one Cambodian women benefitted from the training.  Along with the job skills they learned, they were also able to bond as a cohort.  Horton and Scott discovered that many of the young women lacked support and guidance.  The students greatly benefitted from group discussions of their future goals.  By the time Horton and Scott left Cambodia, five “Employment for Education” participants had been offered new jobs as housekeepers.

Horton and Scott also found the experience valuable to their own career goals.  In their final report, they said, “The Gephardt Social Change Grant gave us an opportunity to gain more international experience, which can be difficult because of the cost of travel.  We were able to fund our travel costs, test our curriculum, and make great professional connections.  The summer affirmed both of our desires to proceed with careers in international development.”