Youth Development

• Founding Blogger, EducateDeviate (January 2006 – Ongoing)
  EducateDeviate features resources, people, thoughts, analysis, and information relating to alternative education and youth empowerment from a Malaysian perspective.
  On EducateDeviate I profile inspiring young people, promote interesting opportunities for youth, write guides to various forms of alternative education, discuss Malaysian education, and essentially advocate for young people to learn what they want to learn in their own way. Besides the blog, I’ve also set up a booth at the 2006 Levis 501 Youth Festival, and am co-creating a Young Speakers list with the International Young Professionals Foundation.

• Delegate, Asia Pacific Cities Summit Youth Forum (September 2007)
  The Asia Pacific Cities Summit brings leaders in government, business, and community around the Asia Pacific region to Brisbane and other cities biennially to discuss urban development, economics, and other national matters.
  The Youth Forum – the first of its kind in the Summit – brought about 100 young people from around the Asia Pacific region to work on youth development in the region. There were various talks and sessions about community development, water, migration, and so on. We also had the opportunity to network and create projects for Asia-Pacific youth, one of them being the Youth Without Borders project which trains young people to support their peers in the Pacific islands. It was an amazing experience, especially since it was new and organised wholly by young people, and is one of the few conferences I’ve seen that has resulted in real-world action.

• Delegate, 4th Annual Youth Assembly at the United Nations (August 2007)
  Organised by the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation, the yearly conference brings young people worldwide together for three days at the United Nations, as well as a pre-conference leadership training session and tours around New York.
  Our conference dealt with the Millennium Development Goals and had speakers from various industries, such as media, development, business, and so on. There was a particular focus on using hip-hop as a means of spreading the word about the MPGs. The leadership training had sessions with business leaders (Pepsi-Cola, etc), Model UN, and group projects. Personally I found the conference a letdown as it was not very well-organised and hardly any real-world action came out of the conference. The majority of the attendees came from a youth religious organisation, which affected the balance somewhat. The potential for great impact was there, but not fully realised. I kept a liveblog of the conference that includes details on the speakers and sessions.