In the bustling coastal town of Sihanoukville, a young woman is quietly changing the game. Sok Chanthy, a member of the Young Entrepreneurs Association of Cambodia (YEAC), is the founder of O2 Café, a space that blends greenery, art, and community, reflecting not just natural aesthetics but the creativity and potential of Cambodian women.
With wooden furniture bathed in natural sunlight, walls adorned with colourful pictures and paintings—including a majestic elephant, a Cambodian symbol of strength and compassion—and lush, thriving plants, O2 Café is more than a café.
It is a bold declaration: here, women are taking their rightful place as leaders, innovators, and keepers of cultural heritage.
Chanthy’s Journey: Local Roots, Global Dreams
“I just have this restaurant, where we sell snacks, rice, coffee… In the future, I want to sell shrimp paste,” Chanthy says with humility. “I used to live in a fishing village. I was a fishing girl. That’s why our products are cheap and not well known. Many Cambodian people buy products from abroad, not from our villages.”
Jars of her family’s shrimp paste are neatly displayed. Taking one in her hands, she explains she dreams of expanding her family business locally and one day sharing Cambodian flavours across the world.
“I still need to work on packaging and prepare more, then maybe across Cambodia, and why not one day abroad, like Europe?”
Women’s Empowerment: Lead, Innovate, and Thrive
Chanthy’s journey is one of determination, and she did not walk it alone.
Action Education / Aide et Action, in partnership with YEAC, supported her with capacity-building training through the CO-SAVED project, co-funded by the EU. She learnt how to develop a business plan, lead confidently, innovate, improve packaging, register a business, and even navigate international export.
She also discovered Ikigai, a Japanese philosophy of purpose. This concept represents the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for—your reason for being.
“Through training, I could also expand my business contacts network,” she adds enthusiastically, carrying the quiet strength of someone building not just a business, but a movement. Chanthy represents a new wave of leadership: women reclaiming economic space, valuing local knowledge, and connecting their communities to wider global markets without erasing cultural roots.
Her story reminds us that leadership is crafted, nurtured, and trained—and women like Chanthy are showing the way.
At O2 Café, each cup of coffee, each pot of shrimp paste, is a small revolution. It is a testament to the power of women’s enterprise, the resilience of local communities, and the radical truth that when women lead, economies—and cultures—thrive.
