WHV-Angkor offers an opportunity to raise awareness of participants, volunteers, park workers and local community members about various issues affecting Angkor Archaeological Park, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, located outside Siem Reap in Cambodia, Southeast Asia. Issues include conservation, preservation, sustainable development, tourism management, and protecting continued discoveries. The program also focuses on establishing relations and partnerships between the peoples involved to attain sustainable results, including the creation of an eco-community to alleviate population pressures at Angkor. XplorMor International had the privilege to work alongside the youth volunteers and create a photographic journal of events, meetings, instructional classes and on-site conservation efforts. Please tour the galleries below to journey with us.

From UNESCO: The UNESCO World Heritage Education Programme, initiated as a UNESCO special project in 1994, gives young people a chance to voice their concerns and to become involved in the protection of our common cultural and natural heritage. It seeks to encourage and enable tomorrow’s decision-makers to participate in heritage conservation and to respond to the continuing threats facing our World Heritage.

Within the framework of the UNESCO World Heritage Education Programme, World Heritage Volunteers (WHV) Initiative has been launched since 2008 in collaboration with the Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service (CCIVS) to mobilize and involve young people and youth organisations in World Heritage preservation and promotion.

Young people learn about World Heritage Sites, about the history and traditions of their own and other cultures, about ecology and the importance of protecting biodiversity. They become aware of the threats facing the sites and learn how the international community as a whole unites to save our common heritage. Most importantly, they discover how they can contribute to heritage conservation and make themselves heard.

Click the logos to get involved and explore your world!