FURTHER REFINING YOUTH ASPIRATIONS
PETALING JAYA: The 2050 National Transformation (TN50) Circles of the Future was the second phase of the youth engagement programme by the Youth and Sports Ministry.
More than 200 youths and experts were paired to further refine over 60,000 unique aspirations that were received from almost two million youths in the first phase to explore the implications for Malaysia’s future.
Besides diving deep into the aspirations in the direction of 2050 from the youths’ perspective, the second phase also identified potential initiatives that could be implemented in the near future towards the TN50 target.
There were five Circle of the Future groups that were launched by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on May 26 last year to discuss the topics, namely – Economy and Jobs, Life and Wellness, Governance, Society and Lifestyle.
The group also held a workshop together, known as the Makmal Percambahan Idea Belia or Youth Idea Germination Workshop where members gathered and held a twoday discussion to come up with ideas that could potentially help realise the aspirations and ideas of the youth as we approach 2050.
The findings from the session, known as the TN50 Ideas, is an early exploration of the aspirations to create ideas and suggestions that are viable.
There were also several TN50 Ideas proposed by the members and these were featured in the digital highlights of the TN50 Youth Canvas Report.
Nurhisham Hussein and June Yao suggested an “Early Malaysian Childhood Education Package”, a digital programme that delivers information and reminders to parents with an aim of assisting early childhood education and development support.
A future pioneer school concept was proposed by Dzameer Dzulkifli and Firdaus Ali known as “SMK Unicorn” where skills from the 21st century can be applied among students through collaborative pro- ject-based learning and community service.
Raja Jesrina Arshad suggested “Eat More (Healthy Food) and Play More Programme” while Afiz Johar recommended the concept of “Involvement of People in Local Governments” via a digital platform to encourage accountability of the local governments’ budgets and to provide feedbacks and follow-up on issues.
Meanwhile, Dzaeman Dzulkifli and Nik Nabila proposed for a “Sustainable Land Usage Index” to gauge the sustainability of land usage in every area and to identify potential abandoned urban areas to be developed as crop gardens and intercropping in agricultural farms, reducing the need to open up new lands in forests.
“Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)” in the Government was the brainchild of Dr Dhesi Raja where a programme could combine AI and data analysis to predict the dengue endemic with a high forecast accuracy.
He hoped this approach can be a model of AI usage benefiting the people in health and other fields.
Faisal Ariff proposed a new national service concept called Khidmat Malaysia or Malaysian Service where participants would be assigned to community services in multiracial groups with an aim of strengthening unity while Fadzli Rahim suggested a “Future Integrated Community Hub” focussing on senior citizens and the disabled.
Not neglecting the country’s diverse tradition of arts and culture, Alena Murang recommended a “Malaysian Connection Programme” to raise awareness and to bridge the gap between the various cultures in the country. She suggested that youths spend 10 days to experience and learn the various areas of Malaysian arts and culture through programmes such as workshops and cultural dialogues.
Ganesh Muren suggested for a development of “Malaysia Smart Villages”, an initiative to deliver light and easy-to-maintain infrastructures powered by green technology through collaboration with consortium corporate companies and related government agencies.
The “Industry Triggering Athletes” initiative by Sharon Wee is a work placement programme to assist post-competitive athletes to move to new career paths after determining the relevant trainings and education they require to proceed.
The distilled aspirations and ideas were highlighted in the digital draft of the TN50 Youth Canvas on the TN50 website, serving as a preview of the final report.
The digital draft of the TN50 Youth Canvas arranged the collected aspirations into seven main chapters – Dynamic Economy, Fulfilling Work; Education for the Future; A Fair and Cohesive Society; A Foundation of Health and Wellbeing; Responsible Stewardship of our Resources; Effective and Accountable Government and Vibrant, Winning Nation.
The main aim of the digital draft of the TN50 Youth Canvas digital highlight was to gather final responses from youths to ensure that all their views and suggestions are taken into consideration before the full report is finalised and handed over to the Prime Minister tomorrow.
The canvas will be one of the important inputs for the TN50 policy formulation by the Government in 2018 and beyond.