Building connections for Community Leaders

Last weekend, I coordinated a networking lunch with some youth leaders from Malaysia as part of my role in Mendaki Club. One of them, Syameer Luthfy was a fellow SSEAYP participant and I had invited him to speak as a youth community leader in May to inspire and provide perspectives on the good work that they do in their respective countries from within our region. 

He is the Treasure of an operating body for The Duke of Edinburghs's International Award locally known as Anugerah Remaja Perdana Rakan Muda and they have currently around 250 active members participating in the awards in Klang Valley. He and his two teammates Mr Mark Yogaraj (leader) and Amir Faiq were visiting Singapore and had requested for a courtesy call to Mendaki Club. Initially, we had plans to host them at one of the planned coding workshops but the session was postponed so we hosted them for lunch at the Dim Sum Place instead.

In our conversations, we learnt that their youth organisation (Pergerakan Belia Inspirasi aka PBI) was a non-governmental organisation with links to the military as well as the youth ministry in Malaysia. Their leader ever represented them in the youth parliament too and interestingly he had served National Service in the Singapore Navy in the past as well. They stayed in Larkin (Johor Bahru) and commuted daily as they visited SAFRA, Tekka, Geylang Serai, Malay Heritage Centre, Civil Defence Gallery and other places of interest. They spoke highly of our public transportation system and share that one of the things they hoped to replicate over there was the idea of community clubs or common places for leisure like SAFRA and Home Team NS Clubhouses. We parted ways exchanging name cards and looking forward to potential future collaborations, especially for our Youth Networking Forum led by my MClub Secretary Hilmi.

After playing our roles as ambassadors of Singapore, I actually had a meeting with real Ambassadors Alami Musa and Zainul Abidin Rasheed. We met online and discussed in preparation for the in-person fireside chat as part of the Future Leaders initiative session on 24th September 2022. It is great to hear from the veteran community leaders and their intentions to serve and transfer some of their wisdom to future potential community leaders who will be attending. I will update this blog further on how the session goes and hope that the participants will benefit from the programme.

Updated 27/09/22: The session went pretty well (thank God and thanks to the team too!) and we learnt a lot from the wisdom and stories of the 2 senior Malay/Muslim community leaders we invited. The secretariat team even surprised me with a cake at the dinner after the session where we also had customised wooden trays and keychains with marbling paint art.