The Experience with Youth Engagement Summit (YES) 2009 on 16-17 November 2009 [Day One]
[Source: http://www.yes2009.asia/logos/yes_final_logo_square.jpg]
http://www.yes2009.asia/downloads/YES-2009%20MIX.mp3
To start of with my blogging experience towards YES 2009 for the past 2 days at Putrajaya International Convention Center (PICC), I would like to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to my girl friend, who invited me to attend such a fantastic event which had made my most remarkable event of the year 2009. Further to this, I would like to take this opportunity to special thanks to all sponsors to make this event materialized.
I came to realise this event through lowyat.net, which indicated to win free tickets for YES 2009. I know that I won’t be so fortunate enough to have the opportunity in securing a seat free of charge soon enough as compared to the teenagers out there across the S.E.A. region. Thus, I dropped the idea even though I was still hoping for miracle without doing anything.
The objective for this event is to create the awareness to the youth who are presently at the age ranging from 15-35 years old, to inspire and to engage them, who believe in change, be ready for change and commit to change by way of discourse. Throughout the entire session, the youth could voice their concerns and views upon social-environmental, economical and political matters in their respective countries across the region. Plus, the regional leaders and global icons may well listen to those voices and respond during the 2-day discussions.
Since this event seems like no other event in the history so far and for that reason, the event has the global change icons to come here from many parts of the world to share their tremendous successful experiences over the years and the path that they had gone through to strike and worked very hard towards achieving their goals behind the scenes.
This event begun with a wonderful speech given by Khailee Ng, the Director of Youth Communities for YES2009. He is probably within the age ranging from 20-25 years old, who made the following remarkable opening:
“We stand before a world of 6.7 billion of people. Competing. And collaborating for better quality of life.
And in this world, there are 200 million of us in Southeast Asia. Young. Aged 15 to 35. Energetic. Restless, and we are ready for change. A change for our jobs, our education, our family, our personal habits, our purpose, our success, our future.
And we are very fortunate to have 500 of the actual youths behind these stories to fly in from across the region to join us today.
These are a new breed of youth leaders armed to the teeth with weapons of mass connectivity.
Need to know something. Google.
Need to get the word out. Twitter.
Need to get friends involved? Facebook.
Need to meet like minds and get thousands more to move – there’s a way – and the young people of who are with us today will to find it.
Such is the world we live in.
Such is the power of in the hands of the youth.
Ladies and gentlemen – this is youth engagement. This is the youth engagement summit. You’re in it.
We’ve come too far to let it end here.
So let us use the Youth Engagement Summit 2009 as our launch pad to so much more.
We’ve come too far as a collective, to leave our future in the hands of others, when the world is telling us that we are the change we seek.
We’ve come to far, to not go all the way.” [Source: Sarah Bautista (Facebook)]
To be honest, I’m deeply impressed with his outstanding given speech. A speech with full of inspirations, a speech with having hopes and visions, a speech with full of our voices to the world out there and yet to be listened.
The YES2009 started with the speaker who is very popular in the world with the hottest communication tool presently. He is co-founder of Twitter who called himself as Biz Stone. His speech is concentrating on “Open, Informed, and Engaged: A Changing Communication Landscape”. Throughout the presentation, he mentioned that Twitter is not just an overnight success; indeed it took about 10 years of hard work to accomplish it. He shared his experience throughout the entire process of making it happened, started with an idea and followed by sharing the idea and worked closely with his peers and friends. He also shared his view that how useful of the communication via Twitter nowadays that could possibly come to a rescue when there was a Twitter user who sent the message across before he got himself locked up in jail during the riot. At the end of the presentation, he concluded that Twitter has an impact and contribution to the society around the globe.
The next speaker was a former Managing Director of World Bank. Her name is Dr. Mamphela Ramphele who is a current trustee on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. She was here to speak about “Youth Leadership in a Changing World; An Opportunity for a Paradigm Shift”. She spoke about the rapid changing world that we are living today, with the climate change and disruptions, financial crisis as well as the issue on imbalance populations. There is a big room for youth leader to take on the challenge and ready for change. A fundamental change is required to be based on ethical aspect. She also mentioned despite the communication technology advancement has bring the world smaller and put the people closer in today’s world, however, this is nothing but more than a warmest hug and face-to-face interaction.
The following speaker right after the lunch break, who is a very famous actor from Bollywood in the early 1970s. Mr. Amitabh Bachchan sent his sincere apology to all of us at such a very short notice as he could not turn up for this summit. Nevertheless, this could easily replaced by another speaker. His name is Mr. Narain Karthikeyan, a F1 driver from India. He sounded in a very humble tone and because of that, I believe he is a down-to-earth kind of person. Throughout the entire interview steering by Lorraine Hahn, he shared his experiences specifically on the path of his past while he was young towards his dream as a F1 driver today. Plus, he shared his stories concerning to the fund-raising on the F1 sponsorship. It was never been easy to get sponsorship from the local organizations to support his entire expenses during the F1 competition season, and that included those expenses on accommodations, food & drink, et cetera. Even though Narain was challenged by the obstacles that he had, but he never give up to keep looking, keep hunting, and keep sourcing the potential sponsorships from different organizations. I believe his persistency towards his objective is the major key of success and shaped him the one who become as of today.
For those who know Sir Bob Geldolf, perhaps this great man would not sounds like a stranger to you. He is the founder of Live Aid and Live8. Previously, he was a popular musician with the famous rock-and-roll band called Boomtown Rats during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Just before his speech, there was a 3-5 minutes short clip played to proudly introduce this great man. There were so many Live 8 concerts and performances carried out in a very large scale at different cities around the globe which solely to serve for a purpose. A purpose where a message is urged to be sent to the G8 on the global call for Action Against Poverty particularly in South Africa.
He began his presentation with a sarcastic statement where he confronted the local relevant authority banned his concert many years ago in Malaysia. And this same incident has repeatedly itself to “BEYONCE – I AM” concert which was cancelled recently. The entire auditorium was full with laughter. I didn’t understand his whole intention to bring out the topic at the beginning of the presentation; nevertheless, it was truly a laugh making joke and the audience were very responsive to it. The whole talk was to create the awareness of social accountability to the youth across the regions in a global scale, such as poverty, global warming, pollution and so on. As a youth for a leader in the future, the social accountability would no longer confine to the country on its own. In deed, it should put together to work hand-in-hand across the borders to fix things right, because at the end of the day, it is the only planet we all living on.
There was a scrabble game held just before the first-day-event called for a day. The game was started with the best scrabble player 2007 in the world against the group of youth at about 10 tables on stage from different countries across the S.E.A. His name is Ganesh Asirvatham. He is from city called Klang and the state called Selangor. And the best part was, he looks young! Very young in deed. We witnessed his “Malaysia Boleh” in action live on stage at P.I.C.C., Putrajaya.
– End of Day One –
