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Podcasts | Society | Southeast Asia
A dialog with Margaret Bywater.
Margaret Bywater has been a distinguished determine in Cambodian civil society for greater than three a long time, working with refugees and serving to to rebuild the schooling sector, primarily via libraries and the institution of knowledge providers.
In the course of the Eighties she toured refugee camps in Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong earlier than arriving in what was then referred to as Kampuchea in 1986. She later undertook a consultancy for the Ministry of Ladies’s Affairs in Afghanistan.
Working with Quaker Service Australia, Bywater lobbied for recognition of the Soviet-backed Individuals’s Republic of Kampuchea and restoration of presidency assist, whereas backing efforts to discover a peaceable answer to the long-running political deadlock in the course of the remaining years of the Chilly Struggle.
From 1984 to 1991 she served as an government member of the Australian Council for Abroad Assist, chairing its Indochina Committee, and headed the Quaker Service Australia staff accountable for English language instructing on the College of Phnom Penh’s Institute of Overseas Languages.
Lots of her college students would go on to carry necessary positions in authorities.
Bywater then spent 20 years creating skilled librarianship with the Central Library on the College of Phnom Penh – now the Royal College of Phnom Penh – and the next 12 months she joined the Asia Basis as a library and data sources adviser.
Since 2014, she has supplied coaching, developed a digital analysis library and providers for researchers and fellows on the Parliamentary Institute of Cambodia, working as a full-time librarian specialist.
Bywater spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt in regards to the extraordinary adjustments which have occurred in Cambodia because the Eighties, the transition to peace and financial development, the significance of libraries, and delivering books in a time of warfare.
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