Global Changemakers

On Mondays, www.global-changemakers.net turns into Speakers’ Corner: members of the network and community have their say on their work and the issues that concern them.

Hello everyone. My name is Shariqa Habib. I am a Global Changemaker from Bangladesh. Presently, I am studying at Taylor’s University College, Malaysia. I am doing a Pre-University program. And this semester, I am taking a World Issues course. For this class, we organized a World Issues conference on 24th April, 2010. This class has only 18 students this semester, and the expectations were really high from us – as it was the fourth World Issues conference being organized by World Issues class.

For several months, we raised money, got in touch with Key note speakers, possible sponsors, NGOs, media – it was a huge responsibility on us, but at the same time a great learning experience as well. We, the students of the class, not only had to organize this whole event, but also did workshops which were attended by the hundreds of participants who came to the conference. We had many different NGOs who came to our conference to give out workshops and they were- WWF, Forest Voices, Heart4Hope, Pink Triangle Foundation, Malaysian Nature Society, Please Don’t Say My Name, Creating a Happy Space, Kiwanis, EMPOWER, MIND, Suaram, People for Penan, Women’s Aid Organization and Malaysian Oncological Society. We had two keynote speakers at our conference – Mr. Steve McCoy, one of the best keynote speakers in Malaysia, and the CEO of Malaysiakini, Mr. Prameesh Chandran.

The student run workshops had various subjects such as Women’s Rights, Education for All, Poverty Relief, Refugee, Biodiversity, Global Warming, Child’s Rights and Ocean Health. I ran the workshop on Poverty with a fellow classmate. A lot of people participated in our workshop. We talked about what the factors of poverty are and what other problems does poverty contribute to. Then I shared how I have witnessed extreme poverty in my country and my partner shared how she has witnessed extreme poverty in Malaysia. We then talked about how individuals and organization have stepped up to end extreme poverty. Then we talked about how we, as individuals of the society, can contribute to end extreme poverty. We received great feedbacks from the participants of our workshop. We also got the opportunity to attend the NGO workshops, which was a great learning experience.

Arranging a big scale conference like Hear Us Out 4 was a great challenge. But it was a great learning experience in itself. At the end of the conference, when we handed the checks to the NGOs of all the money we raised for several months, we felt such a peace of mind and also that our hard work and stresses of so many months were successful! Cheers!

- Shariqa Habib, Global Changemaker

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