Youth Empowerment: Education, Technology and Volunteerism

Earlier today I had the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the topic of youth empowerment at a Mendaki Club workshop as part of the Leadership Incubator 2019. Being the second speaker out of three, I used Menti.com to engage the audience at the start as well as to sense out their interests. I got them to rank the subtopics so that I would know what to elaborate and spend more of my 20 minutes airtime on. I also had to make sure that my points do not overlap too much with my previous speaker who was Mr Henry Kwek, MP of Nee Soon GRC and Kebun Baru constituency in particular.

Percentages computed at the click of a circle

I  introduced myself as a Google for Education certified Innovator. In fact, I am probably the first and only Malay Google Innovator in Singapore. I also wear the hats of a volunteer leader with Young NTUC and a subcommittee member with MClub. I linked the earlier online poll to my different roles when I teach students in class, lead volunteers in YNTUC's Project Refresh and also support events for MClub.

The part which I felt was most powerful in my sharing was when I did a quick poll on who in the audience felt that they were passionate or compassionate individuals. Unsurprisingly, many raised their hands. I then gave them a revelation through a brief etymology lesson on the two words. The root word, pati, means 'to suffer' in latin. I then elaborated on how being passionate in something meant that one should be willing to suffer for it. I hoped that the message stuck with them.

The other three takeaways that I emphasised was the 3 Big 'I's; Big Idea, Big Insight and Big Impact. I shared how we should always to hings with heart and empathy, think about time and timing (80:20 Pareto Principle) and also consider the scalability and effect of our actions. You can have a read of some of the pointers in my slides published at the bottom of this page.

After my sharing, Ms Chitra Venkatesh from WWF, spoke about environmental concerns and challenges. She brought up several interesting statistics including the idea that turtles' gender depended on the temperature before the egg hatches and lately due to the rising temperatures the number of female turtles to male ones were about 100+:1 and that really meant that the population was truly endangered. She also alluded to the idea that if we are not careful, someday we would have to pay to get out flowers pollinated as the natural way may not be prevalent anymore. I paid extra attention when those facts and figures hit me.

During the panel discussion that followed, we were asked questions pertaining to the overwhelming feeling individuals might encounter or experience when championing their causes. I spoke about time management, setting priorities and finding the higher purpose as those worked for me ever since I started on my activism and advocacy journey. As time was short, there were some other questions posed and I had the chance to answer the last one which was related to how to start learning coding especially since I was the only one who spoke about technology. My advice was find a way to do it in a fun way, do it with company and think about the impact or have a clear end in mind. It was only after the moderator, my friend, Lewis Liu rounded things up that it resonated with me that the advice could work for almost anything related to what we talked about today. So, I'd like to end off with that and may you find meaning in what I shared.