When I joined Women In Tech’s Up:Skill programme in 2023, I signed up for a CSR session connected to my work at the time.

I came for the content. I stayed for the room.

As I shared in my earlier story, When I Signed Up for a CSR Session and Found a Community, I gained new skills, met new people, and made useful connections. More unexpectedly, I found a community of women with whom I could learn, share, and grow.

I did not yet know how much of that connection would continue after the programme ended.

A coffee with no agenda

In June 2024, some of us from the first cohort arranged a small meetup at Sneha Center.

There was no workshop. No facilitator. No agenda to complete.

We simply wanted to see each other again.

By then, we had all returned to our own work and responsibilities. Yet the conversation felt easy, as if the programme had never really ended.

We talked about work, life, what we were learning, and what had happened since we last sat together as a cohort.

It was a small meeting, but it made me realise that something had continued beyond the programme structure.

The connection had become ours.

Sometimes the connection finds its way into the work

Some of the relationships from Up:Skill also found their way into our professional lives.

In 2024, the Community Lead and I stayed connected and helped coordinate speakers for a gender and technology session initiated by the regional team at Open Development Mekong as part of an ICT gathering in Siem Reap.

Neither of us was there in person.

We simply helped make the connections from behind the scenes.

It was a small example of something I was beginning to notice: relationships built in one space can travel into completely different spaces.

Over time, I also had opportunities to connect people from my professional circle with people in the Up:Skill network. Some of those connections continued to grow beyond my direct involvement.

By 2025, connections across our professional networks had also contributed to collaboration between our organisations, including a multi-stakeholder conversation on AI and gender inclusion.

By then, I had already left my full-time role at Open Development Cambodia and was not involved in the event’s detailed planning or discussions. I saw the collaboration come together when the event took place.

I found that quietly satisfying.

Not because the event was mine. It wasn’t.

But because a connection I had once helped make had continued to grow beyond my own involvement.

There is something meaningful about that kind of connection. You don’t have to hold onto it or be part of every conversation. Sometimes, you simply introduce people, and the relationship takes its own path.

And the same was true of the relationships I had built with the women themselves. Beyond collaborations and professional opportunities, some continued to show up for me—joining events I hosted, sharing feedback, listening, and cheering me on.

I began to realise that a community’s value is not measured only by what its members accomplish together. Sometimes, it is also found in the connections they carry forward, the opportunities they help create for one another, and the care they continue to show long after the original programme ends.

And then I returned to the room

In December 2025, something unexpected happened.

I was invited back to an Up:Skill alumni networking event as a speaker for a fireside conversation with alumni from the first and second cohorts.

This time, I wasn’t sitting in the audience as a participant.

I was one of the people sharing the experience.

We talked about what we had learned from the programme, what we had applied afterwards, professional growth, big wins, funny failures, and the unexpected turns our careers had taken.

When I looked back at my own experience, one session came to mind especially clearly: the self-love session.

It was where I learned to practise greater love and kindness towards myself. For those of us in Cohort 1, it also became a turning point in how we connected with one another. As we listened to each other’s experiences as girls and women—whether as leaders, junior team members, or students at different stages of our lives and careers—we began to feel a deeper sense of connection and emotional support.

I told the second cohort that the experience had stayed with me in ways I had not expected.

It continues to shape the environment I want to create for younger people I work with: one where they feel encouraged to pursue the work they care about and have the space to discover and exercise their talents.

But there was another part of the story I wanted them to know.

Even after the programme ended, some of my Cohort 1 alumni stayed connected to me through my professional work. They made time in their busy lives to join events I hosted, participate in discussions, share feedback, cheer me on, listen, and applaud.

Sometimes it was simply a message.

Sometimes it was showing up in the room.

Sometimes it was taking a seat at an event where we could continue learning together, raise our voices, or simply listen to one another.

These gestures may have looked small from the outside, but they never felt small to me.

They made me feel seen. They reminded me that what I was doing mattered to someone beyond my workplace.

And I remember wondering:

Is this what it feels like to be part of a community? Is this what belonging feels like?

Perhaps it is.

So, when I had the opportunity to speak with the second cohort, I wanted to thank my Cohort 1 alumni in front of the wider community.

I wanted the newer cohort to know that these women were not simply people I had once shared a programme with. They were still part of my journey, and I was grateful that our connection had continued.

In 2023, I was there to learn. In 2025, I was invited back to share. Not because of a title or position, but simply as a Cohort 1 alumna who had once been sitting where they were.

I hoped that something from my experience might stay with them, just as something from the programme had stayed with me.

The room had changed.

And so had I.

A community can change form

Looking back, I realise that what stayed with me was not only what I learned during the programme, but also what grew from it afterwards.

A community does not always remain a group of people meeting regularly in the same room.

Sometimes it becomes a message. A familiar face at an event. An invitation to collaborate. Someone taking the time to listen.

The programme gave us the first room. What happened afterwards depended on what we chose to nurture —and the opportunities we had to stay connected.

Perhaps some of the quietest work of a programme begins not when the sessions are running, but when they are over.

Not every participant will remain connected. Not every cohort will become a lasting community. And perhaps that cannot be designed or guaranteed.

But programme designers can create the conditions for connection to continue: opportunities to reconnect, spaces where people can contribute, and a culture that values relationships beyond the formal sessions.

Because sometimes, the most meaningful outcome is not only what people take away from a programme.

It is what they continue to give to one another afterwards.

The programme ended.

The community didn’t.

And they kept showing up across different chapters of my work.