UMS students to represent Malaysia at Enactus World Cup
KUALA LUMPUR: Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) will represent Malaysia at the Enactus World Cup 2017 in London in September after its two entrepreneurial projects won in the 2017 Enactus Malaysia National Competition organised by Yayasan Enactus Malaysia.
Students from UMS have come up with the idea of commercialising mulberry leaves by turning it into a mulberry tea production line and using a device to improve the yield of fish in two areas in Sabah.
Using entrepreneurial skills, they educated the villagers in Kampung Tudan on the potential of the mulberry plants that were growing in their village.
They also helped build a ‘Morus Dryer’ to help dry the mulberry leaves while preserving their nutritional value.
The project, took a period of one year and helped uplift the lives of 300 villagers by increasing their average monthly income from RM514 to RM700.
The second project by UMS was in Sepanggar island where they introduced the ‘Payao’ device to help the fishermen there increase their catch.
The project helped the creation of a new fishing area with the Payao near the island, allowing better accessibility, compared to before where the fishermen had to travel over 100km for a better catch.
This has helped some 23 artisanal fishermen in Sepanggar increase their monthly income from RM620 to RM2,250.
The students have also helped the fishermen reduce their monthly cost of fuel by 67% with the device.
The other winners of the 2017 Enactus Malaysia National Competition were Universiti Tenaga Nasional Kampus Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah and Universiti Malaysia Terengganu.
CIMB group chief executive Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Aziz, who is also the Yayasan Enactus Malaysia chairman said the competition helps students become better as they focus on their social skills as well as their academic qualifications.
“I think doing programmes like this will help them adapt to the real world because it’s about leadership, teamwork, execution of ideas and things they have learnt in school into practise,” said Zafrul.
“And because this is a competition, they will learn how to win and lose, it gives them a complete education on what to expect when you go into the real world,” he added.
Meanwhile Yayasan Enactus Malaysia Royal patron Tunku Besar Seri Menanti Tunku Ali Redhauddin Tuanku Muhriz said he strongly supports the key objective and the impacts of these projects by turning them into “scalable, sustainable and profitable social enterprises and businesses” as the next natural step in the evolution of these initiatives.
“I sincerely hope the noble efforts undertaken by the Enactus students nationwide will not be regarded as just another humanity project but one that creates sustainable and lasting change,” he said in his speech on Tuesday.
Universiti Tenaga Nasional Kampus Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah presented their project, which was aimed at elevating the socio-economic levels of communities in Pulau Tioman, Tamparuli, Santubong and Relau through beekeeping and honey production.
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu focused on developing and producing variety of cucumber based products such as cucumber pickles and water.
They also helped former drug addicts and ex-juvenile delinquents by helping them get back to society by enhancing their agricultural skills and entrepreneurship knowledge.