JA Malaysia kicked off 2018 with a 2-day meeting with the Ministry of Education and State Education Heads on two of our major programs in 2018. We started the discussion by introducing a new program which will be implemented this year. This program is supported by the Citi Foundation and is called the JA Social Impact Program. This program is based on our JA Be Entrepreneurial program.
We will be delivering this program to 40 schools from 4 states namely WP Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Penang. We estimate to have at least 2000 students joining this program from the selected schools. The connection between corporate sponsors and students always bring out the value of all our programs. With the help of Citi Volunteers, we would be conducting a series of workshops at the schools to introduce to the student’s ways of writing a business plan and the various elements that go in it. Students will then have to work in groups to connect with a socially disadvantaged person or organization and help them improve their business. Furthermore, with mentorship from the Citi Volunteers, this program is designed to improve student’s business acumen through writing and improving their business plan while helping a socially disadvantaged business.
The next day our discussion took a different tangent as we discussed about the ever-growing Cha-Ching Curriculum. This year, this Teacher-Driven program supported by Prudence Foundation will see an increase by 10,000 students from 16,000 students in 2017 to 26,000 in 2018. Through our discussions with the Ministry of Education, we managed to highlight the various challenges faced in 2017 and found ways to avoid them this year. To Officially Launch the Cha-Ching Curriculum and boost the morale of the teachers, this year, Prudence Foundation is organizing the very first Cha-Ching Educators Conference here in Malaysia. This event at the Everly Hotel, Putrajaya, will present a chance for the teachers, educators and state education departments to engage and network among each other. The conference will also be a place where participants can upskill themselves and hence to inspire them to understand the importance of Financial Education.
With the help and support of the Ministry of Education, State Education Departments, Teachers and Prudence Foundation, we at JA Malaysia hope to implement a successful Cha-Ching Curriculum in the year ahead.
The 2018 YE Program kicked off with the Advisors Workshop hosted by GE at their office, attended by 20 teachers and corporate sponsors. It was a good time for all teachers and corporate sponsors to catch-up and strategize on ways of getting the best out of their students. This year the program comprises of 30-40 students from each YE Student Company and all 10 schools is adopted by a Corporate Sponsor each.
This year we developed a YE Student Workbook for the students which offers a more comprehensive approach of educating the students on managing their own company. Following the Advisors workshop, was the Achievers Workshop which was held at Universiti Tun Abdul Razak. Students who held director positions in their company had to attend this workshop. It was a great learning experience as we got corporate leaders from various companies to share their real-life experiences with the students. They were Mr.Stuart Dean- Chairman of JA Malaysia, Datuk Tim Tariq Garland – Director of JA Malaysia & Governor of AMCHAM, Cik Ainul Khalidah Idura- Manager, Human Resource Department, IACT College, Mr.Thevendran – General Manager of Operations Management & Head of Logistics, Fuji Xerox, Mohd. Taufiq – Commercial Finance Manager, General Electric, Mr. Koay Tze Siang – General Manager, Dell Malaysia, Lee Hsin Ye – GE Engine Services, Malaysia, Finance Manager and Thilip Kumar – GE Engine Services Malaysia, Process Engineer. Furthermore, this was followed by the Production Workshop which was held at SMK Taman Sri Muda.
At this workshop, students learnt about the processes involved in creating an efficient production line. The most recent workshop was the Finance workshop which was organised by Ernst & Young. This was an interesting workshop as students learnt the many concepts of Finance and how their company can maintain good financial health. The Program has been gaining steam over the last couple of months, as students are raising funds and creating and producing their own products at school. Once students have their product, they will attend one last workshop which is the Marketing Workshop. At this workshop, the students will learn new ways to market their company and their products as they look forward to the Annual Sales Fair in July. We at JA Malaysia, look on with optimism to see some exciting products from the students.
JA Our Community is designed to help students connect the dots between what they learn in school and the “business of life”- work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. This program is aimed at primary school students as it involves students to understand how citizens contribute to the success of a community.
Recently JA Malaysia organized this program for 50 students at SK Sathya Sai. This effort was supported by Sage Foundation. It was a wonderful session with the students as they learnt various elements of a successful community such as the government and the flow of money in a community’s economy. As always, the students were extremely excited to take part in the activities and games.
The Sage volunteers as well as our volunteers really enjoyed the session and were amazed at the level of discipline shown by the students. A big thank you to Sage Foundation for showing their commitment and we look forward to more engagement with students through similar programs like this.
With the new version of the JA More Than Money program supported by HSBC, we were excited to roll out this program to the schools. With all its bright colours the revamped program offers better engagement to the students through its interactive activities and games. For 2018, JA Malaysia hopes to reach more than 1,056 students in Klang Valley by conducting 10 workshops through this program.
We kicked off the program with the first workshop at SK Sri Subang Jaya. We managed to reach out to 50 students from this school. This was followed by two more workshops at SK Seafield and SJKT Ladang Batu Ampat comprising of 87 and 83 students respectively. It was an amazing experience not only for the students but also the HSBC Volunteers. The students were very excited and enthusiastic to learn all the new financial concept such as goods, services, tax and loans. Some students were able to grasp more, particularly when they played the interactive board games.
This program outlines what Junior Achievement stands for. Overall, it was a good experience for the volunteers and also a great learning experience for the students. The workshop ended with each student enjoying a McDonalds Happy Meal.
We looking forward to our next workshop on 28th March 2018 at SJKC Pin Hua 1, where we would reach more than 300 students.
AMCHAM was delighted to host John Michel Dumont, Head of International Strategy of Ruder Finn on the 23rd of February 2018 for a talk on Reputation Risk-Preparation, Mitigation & Management. The event started off with opening remarks from Siobhan Das, Executive Director at AMCHAM which was followed by the keynote presentation from our distinguished speaker.
Jean shared extensively on examples of recent Global Crisis’, linking the crisis which arose from business mistakes which resulted in global outrage. He also shared some intriguing figures based on studies that were conducted. One of which was it takes 1 hour for crisis to spread throughout the world, however an astounding 21 hours for companies to issue a meaningful external response. Jean also proceeded to share on how businesses can be more prepared for crisis
The event was then followed by a Q&A session which afforded members and guests the opportunity to present their queries pertaining to risk management. AMCHAM would like to thank Jean Michel for taking the time to share his stellar knowledge.
AMCHAM was delighted to welcome Dato’ Sri Subromaniam Tholasy, Director General of Royal Malaysian Customs and his team to a luncheon with our members on 22 February at the InterContinental Kuala Lumpur.
Dato’ Sri Subromaniam Tholasy had kindly agreed to meet with the AMCHAM Executive Team earlier in the month to provide opportunity to highlight some key areas in which our members request support or clarification. During this closed-door session he emphasised to members that Customs is aware of their challenges and is taking active steps to address them. A ‘preview’ of some key initiatives that the department intends to roll out and announce over the coming months was shared. Senior directors from the department’s GST Division, Customs Division, and Corporate Planning also made themselves available to meet with our members and engage in open dialogue.
This dialogue with Customs follows our meeting with Datuk Seri Haji Johari Abdul Ghani, Minister of Finance II, earlier in February. AMCHAM looks forward to working with both bodies on a more technical level over the coming year to raise and help solve some current tax and logistics challenges.
