Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Youth Defined: Shape Our Future

I was given a chance to participate in “Youth Defined: Shape Our Future” workshop organized by myHarapan – a non-profit Youth Trust Foundation, and endorsed by the Ministry of Higher Education and PEMANDU. This workshop was held from Dec 10-12, where around 500 participants from IPTA and IPTS all over the nation were accommodated at this exclusive 5-star hotel: Palace of the Golden Horses, to contribute to our country.

Palace of Golden Horses
The objective of the workshop is to help the government improve the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and Government Transformation Programme (GTP), introduced by our Prime Minister Dato Seri Najib Razak in 2010. 

In this 3-day workshop, we were split into 15 groups. Each group was in charge of one National Key Result Area (NKRA) or National Key Economic Area (NKEA). I was chosen to lead Group 12 to come out with a proposal to improve one of the NKRA (National Key Result Area) - Urban Public Transport. This NKRA is a part of Government Transformation Programme.

I was fortunate to have a group of very talented youth leaders from diverse background. One of my best assistants was even from Sydney. At the end of the workshop, we successfully came out with a detailed proposal to solve the deteriorating urban traffic congestion problem. We target at 3 key areas:
  • Reducing waiting time
  • Integrating public transport information on the web and mobile phone
  • Improving communication among the public, the Ministry of Transport, and the authority party
Our mission is to increase the users of public transports, and thus helping to reduce the congestion on the roads and promote urbanization.

The highlight of the event was the Summit Dinner, where we will present our proposal, which comprised 15 different projects, to our Prime Minister. Being one of the six youth representatives to dine with our Prime Minister at the VVIP Table was the icing on the cake to me! I would never imagine that! Thanks for all my teammates for their dedicated effort, trust and support! We shared some of our ideas to our Prime Minister at the dining table and we had a good mentoring session with him along the dinner. The Summit Dinner ended after the presentation of our proposal.

Summit Dinner with our Prime Minister - Y.A.B Datuk Seri Haji Mohd Najib, Minister of Higher Education - Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, Chairman of myHarapan - Mr. Roslan Bakri Zakaria
I felt thrilled and proud to be able to give some contribution to my country. All in all, a million thanks to myHarapan for putting all this together! You guys have inspired many young leaders to contribute to our country.

Next, I will be working around the clock alongside Michael Teoh (One Young World Malaysian Ambassador), Chris Eigeland (One Young World Australia Ambassador), and many more patriotic youth leaders across Asia and Oceania region on one gigantic international project called #WakeUpCall! Stay Tuned! For more information, please visit www.ourwakeupcall.org