Youth Engagement Summit 2009 - Part 1

Congratulations to Khailee and team for successfully organized Youth Engagement Summit 2009 (YES 2009) at Putrajaya International Convention Center on 16th and 17th November 2009.

A few things that really stand out in the Youth Engagement Summit:-
a) The quality of the speakers
b) The spirit of the youth across South East Asia
c) The volunteers (especially those youth)

I was lucky to be able to be there to listen to those speakers and also to meet up with 20 of our JobStreet.com job seekers, who came from Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand through the partnership with SEAChange. JobStreet.com is the Official Job Board of SEAChange and official partner of YES2009.

This post is going to be long and I will share a few points that I learn from each of the speaker.

--> Lorraine Hahn (Host)
a) Youth are now effecting and embracing the changes around. They are daring to spark a change, and many youths are already a leader today.

--> Datuk Johan Jaafar (Advisor of YES2009)
a) If youth do not speak up, the voices would never be heard and get lost in the noises.
b) There are 200 Million youths in the South East Asia region, and it is time to empower the youth. Share views or ideas around.

--> Harmandar Singh (Organizing Chairman)
a) This event is organized due to inspired by change. Hope to create new generation of leaders. If we try, we may succeed, and hence embark on this summit.
b) It is great to see 600,000 youth from South East Asia step forward and get heard.
c) This was planned 4 months ago, with the dream of getting Barack Obama to be here to address the audience. Met up with US State Department for 3 times.
d) Lets not give up on hope. Provide hope to shine and hopefully it would sparkle and the youth would be fearless leaders.
e) Get together to create miracles beyond the mission.
f) Have fun, share your experience/knowledge and learn. Hopefully the youth would go home a little wiser.
g) The duty of the organizer is not to fail the hope of the youth.

--> Khailee (Youth Asia and SEAChange)
a) Total world population - 6.7 Billion. Of which, 200 Million live in South East Asia, age between 15 and 35 and ready to bring the change in their career, education, family etc. Hence, there is this movement South East Asia Youth For Change (SEAChange).
b) The Vietnamese saw war destroyed their nation, yet the youths meet up to speak in English and this network of meet-ups spread across the nation and it is small step to make Vietnamese more accessible to the world. (Note: Speaking English Meet-ups (Malaysia) Facebook Page was just created to encourage Malaysians to practice English Language.)
c) The Indonesian youths bring together to protect the rights of the children and have their voice heard by the government. They advice and help the government to understand more about the younger generation of Indonesians.
d) The Malaysian youths get together and make a difference.
e) In total, 105,552 stories were told from various groups in South East Asia.
f) For the youth, when we don't know something, we google; when we want to spread the news around, we tweet; when we want to connect with others, we facebook. The power is now in the hands of the youth.
g) The world has passed judgment on the youth, saying that the youth are apathetic. Employers have no faith on the youth. Many businesses pay millions to buy artificial relationship with the youth.
h) SEAChange has brought together 120 organizations to make the change for South East Asia youths. Millions of words and thousands of videos were shared. It is a network of believers.
i) SEAChange Facebook group has more than 41,000 youths.
j) We have come too far to not go all the way. We should groom the talents and champion the needs of the youth. Youth should start to believe in ourselves and there is no excuse for us to go all the way. We have come too far to not go all the way.

This is the part 1 of my blogging on Youth Engagement Summit. More to come on the sharings by all the speakers.

Hopefully that this would be able to enable those of you who were not able to be there to learn a bit about what happened there.

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