Global Student Outreach

Global Student Outreach is a Cambodia-registered NGO (Registration #1388) working with rural communities in the Cardamom Mountains since 2009. What began as a small group of high school students and volunteers has grown into a locally rooted organization focused on food security, sustainable livelihoods, forest and wildlife protection, and climate resilience.

GSO's work centers on a simple belief: a forest is worth more alive. Rather than asking communities to give up logging, hunting, or land clearing with nothing in return, GSO builds real economic alternatives — agriculture, livestock, aquaculture, and education programs like tuition-free English classes — so that protecting the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary becomes a livelihood, not a sacrifice. Communities act as guardians of the forest through patrols, intelligence-sharing, and conservation-linked income, supporting the buffer zone around the adjacent Samkos REDD+ Project across 27 communities.

GSO invests its funding directly into programs, not overhead, and measures every outcome against a documented, published baseline.