For their effort in coming up with a blueprint on viable programmes that can be implemented at the Campus to cultivate the 1Malaysia concept among the students, the team received a financial grant of RM30,000 to execute the ideas in their blueprint. They were presented the grant by YB Dato' Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, Minister of Higher Education at a ceremony held at Pusat Kebudayaan dan Kesenian Sultan Salehuddin Abdul Azizi Shah, Universiti Putra Malaysia on 10 October 2009.

The team, comprising three Psychology students: Pathmapriya A/P Ganasan, Lawrence Lye Chao Ping, Karen Goh Yee Yiing, and two Foundation students: Fatin Kamalia Binti Ahmad and Lee Thawatchae, was elated at the unexpected victory.

Elaborating on their winning ideas, team leader Pathmapriya said, "Our proposal consists of various activities that our group members had brainstormed together. Rather than focusing solely on the students, we also try to involve everyone in the University such as lecturers and staff. We came up with educational based activities such as Mentor Programme, Home Stay during Festive Seasons, One M Camp, Malaysian Food Carnival, One Malaysia Society, Multi-Lingual Learning Campaign and Soft Skills Learning Programme, that could be fun at the same time."

She continued, "All these activities involve great interaction among students of different ethnicity and religion. We hope that through these activities we can create and promote a more united University community as echoed by the 1Malaysia campaign of creating one nation. One of our activities, the Mentor Programme, which involves mentoring secondary and primary school students, encourages UTAR students to reach out to the community around us to create a greater impact of 1Malaysia, thus creating a stronger and more united younger generation."

In an inspiring tone, Pathmapriya added, "We hope to get strong support from UTAR community, including the management, to ensure the implementation of the 1Malaysia activities at our Campus is successful."

The competition aimed at inspiring institutions of higher learning students to come up with a blueprint of what 1Malaysia is to them and how it should be implemented in their campus. The participants were required to list the activities that can be implemented for one year to achieve 1Malaysia in their campus. A survey had to be conducted at the respective campus to get ideas and views from all parties and the outcome of the survey must be included in the proposal. Besides incorporating the values of 1Malaysia in all the planned activities, it must also include learning outcomes, soft skills, implementation methods, expectations of the participants and evaluation of the effectiveness of the proposed programme.

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Photo and Caption



The winning team members with UTAR Vice-President (Student Development and Alumni Relations) Associate Professor Dr. Yeoh Suan Pow (third from the left), after receiving the mock cheque at the presentation ceremony.