Youth bring smiles to children affected by conflict
On World Children’s Day in Preah Vihear, youth volunteers built skills and helped children find joy, learning, and hope after disruption and displacement
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- Khmer
23 November 2025, Preah Vihear – “To provide smiles, warmth, and happiness to every child,” said 17-year-old Chanda when asked why we celebrate World Children’s Day. For the past two days, she’s been volunteering at UNICEF’s Bonn Phum on the Move festival in Preah Vihear province, where 10,000 children and caregivers have gathered to play, learn, and celebrate child rights.
At the UNICEF Village – where children are learning about child marriage, climate action, nutrition, mental health, and more – she’s been busy teaching children about road safety and traffic rules through a life-sized board game. Next to her, 13-year-old Sith is demonstrating how to correctly wear a road safety helmet. A queue of happy, excited children is forming at the booth.
It’s not been an easy year for the children of Preah Vihear – it’s only four months since 170,000 people were displaced from their homes following the outbreak of violence along the Cambodian border with Thailand, which disrupted essential services, closed schools and health facilities, and inflicted mental distress and trauma on children and families.
For Chanda and her fellow volunteers, this Bonn Phum on the Move – which came together under the theme “Together for Peace, Together for Children’s Rights” – represented a return to normalcy and relief from the toll of recent events.
“We were very stressed because our studies were not going well. We had to take a break because of the conflict,” says 17-year-old Synong. “Now we are happy again, and we can smile again.”
“Holding the event in Preah Vihear is like a medicine to heal the mental state of the people,” says 17-year-old Malin, who’s spent the day face painting. “It can help the people of Preah Vihear forget their sorrows for a while. For me, personally, too, not only as a youth volunteer but also as a participant playing happily.”
Every year, World Children’s Day on 20 November marks the anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Cambodia ratified in 1992. It’s a Global Day of Action for children, by children, and represents a platform for renewing commitments to child rights and for young people to raise their voice about issues that matter to them.
For the past three years, UNICEF Cambodia has partnered with youth network PlerngKob to organise a Bonn Phum on the Move festival in remote, hard-to-reach provinces, bringing fun, learning, and opportunities to vulnerable populations and empowering children as changemakers in their communities and country.
In 2025, hosting World Children’s Day in Preah Vihear province together with provincial authorities was a call for peace and protection for every child, under all circumstances, and an opportunity to reach some of the country’s most vulnerable children. Over 100 young people from Preah Vihear were trained to facilitate the event, lead activities, and bring hope back to their communities.
For the volunteers, it was a chance to build their own skills and grow in confidence while supporting children to learn, smile, and imagine a more hopeful future.
“Children are like a blank sheet of paper. If we lead them well, they’ll grow up well and become good bamboo shoots replacing the bamboo, who must succeed the older generation,” says Malin, using a common Cambodian idiom to describe the role of children in society.
“So we should spend our time usefully by working hard to do things to increase our own abilities. When we volunteer, we gain so many experiences that we never had before, both soft skills and hard skills. It helps cultivate us into youth who are capable, possessing both knowledge and practical skills.”
The two-day UNICEF Village at Chea Sim Tbeng Meanchey General and Technical High School, which also featured performances by popular artists Kesorrr and Roxy, was preceded by a six-kilometre “Run for Peace, Run for Children” at Koh Ker archeological site, a historic temple complex and member of the UNESCO World Heritage List. The race was attended by 900 runners, including around 200 children.
