International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Fellows Exchange IntroductionsCopyrighted
November 6, 2017
City of Dubuque Presentation(s) # 1.
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ICMA Fellows Biographies October 2017
International City/County Management Association (ICMA)
Fellowship Exchange
Introduction and Welcome of ICMA Fellows Mr. Darren Tan
of Singapore and Mr. Chankakada (Kakada) Chhoeum of
Cambodia.
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Supporting Documentation
October 2017 ICMA Fellows Biographies
Darren Tan has held a range of roles across ministries relating to education and
science. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was part of a team that managed the
government scholarships and appointments to the ministry, essentially looking at
potential leaders in the ministry. Following that, he spent 7 years with the Ministry of
Education as an educator. Beyond working on curriculum efforts within the school, he
also took on leadership roles relating to strategic communications and partnerships, in
addition to a number of mentorship positions.
Currently he serves as the Community Outreach and Education manager at Comcrop.
Darren oversees all projects relating to Comcrop's collaboration with organisations with
similar values, to forward their vision of providing communities access to fresh,
nutritious vegetables. By reaching out to various stakeholders across a spectrum of
interests, from schools, to corporate organisations, to NGOs, Comcrop aims to educate
and train the next generation of high-tech farmers to aid in Singapore's food resilience,
on top of their mission to produce tasty and healthy vegetables for the nation.
Comcrop is Singapore's first rooftop farm in the middle of the city's commercial
belt. Tapping on marginalised land on rooftops, they supply fresh vegetables to the
surrounding community. The farm tasks are structured to provide meaningful work for
the marginalised workforce, such as hiring retirees to do harvesting and packing, and
employing people with disabilities, such as those from Movement for the Intellectually
Disabled of Singapore (MINDS), to work on seeding.
Mr. Chankakada (Kakada) Chhoeum is currently employed with ActionAid Cambodia
and in charge of the Climate Resilient Sustainability Agriculture (CSRA) project. His key
responsibilities including providing technical expertise and support to build the capacity
of CSRA and partners while advancing practices at the ground level. At the national
level, they engage in policy dialogue and campaigns on agriculture to identify
sustainable agriculture policy.
He graduated with a Master's of Science and specialized in Agrarian System Analysis
from Montpellier SupAgro. He was awarded a full scholarship funded by the European
Union's Erasmus Mundus Scholar Program. Additionally, he graduated with a Master of
Science in Integrated Management of Agriculture and Rural Development from the
Royal University of Agriculture in Cambodia and received a full scholarship from the
Royal Government of Cambodia.
In 2013, he conducted 5 months of research on Agrarian development and socio-
economic analysis for Indian households in the east of India. In 2012, he completed 3
months of field survey focused on identification and analysis of the farming system in
Burkina Faso. For four months in 2009, he conducted a baseline survey on economic
analysis for rural community's households in western Cambodia.