Tan Sri Dr Omar Harmony Award

In the morning of the 1st of October, the Tan Sri Dr Omar Harmony Award was launched in conjunction with the official opening of our ‘new’ campus block, Block G. The award ceremony was held at the grand ballroom of Block E due to the overwhelming amount of students who came to attend the event.

At 10 am sharp, the top 3 finalist of the Tan Sri Dr Omar Harmony Award went on stage to present their projects to the judges, VIPs and audience.

The first project to present their cause was Dynamic youth 2.0. The project aims to solve the problem of the ubiquity of drug abuse, depression, alcohol abuse and other negative influences in the lives of underprivileged children by using the unorthodox method of football training. The football training is used to empower and enrich the underprivileged youth by serving as medium to teach them about important life skills such as teamwork, persistence and hard work.

Up next was MindFlu, a project which aims to tackle the issue of mental health disorders in rural areas, namely the underprivileged community in Hulu Langat. The project plans on attaining this goal via a three-step approach which include a mental health screening and face-to-face interview, a one-day workshop and the implementation of school-based mental health programmes.

The last project to pitch their ideas and cause to the judges was Scholar Enrichment Programme (SEP). SEP serves as a platform to empower secondary and university students thorough real-life practices and opportunities, experiential learning and awareness. They believe that empowered students are the ones who are able to create significant social impact and become agents of social change. These students will hopefully one day create a sustainable community which is prosperous for the underprivileged community and help solve the rising social issues such as refugees, poverty and sustainability.

After the presentations by the finalists, UCSI’s alumni and co founder of PichaEats, Kim Lim, went on stage to introduce the audience to PichaEats and explored how students can be agents of social change. PichaEats is a project aimed at empowering refugees in Malaysia by providing them with employment opportunities. They provide catering services to various organizations and employ refugees to prepare meals for these occasions. They also help connect the local community to the refugee community by holding open houses at refugees’ homes in hopes of raising awareness among the local community. The project has in fact made a huge impact on the refugee community in Malaysia as evidenced by the fact that the project has won multiple international awards. After introducing PichaEats to the audience, she discussed how students help overcome social issues. She stated that the most important thing is not experience or money, but the passion and determination to help others. She said that with passion and determination, even students can create solutions to social issues and create significant impact on society.

After all the presentations concluded, the guest of honor for this event, YB Dr Maszlee Malik, who is the Malaysian Minister of Education, arrived at the event and was welcomed with a huge round of applause from the audience. This was followed by a welcome speech given by the Vice-Chancellor and President of UCSI, Dato’ Khalid Yusoff.

After the welcome speech, the founder of Tan Sri Dr Omar Harmony Award, Tan Sri Dr Omar Abdul Rahman introduced the the award to the audience. He stated that the award aims to promote education as a force for good to address societal issues. Through this award, students propose ways to address existing societal problems which is in line with United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically quality education and peace, justice and strong institutions. He even explained the origins of the award and why it was named after him.

After that was a speech by the guest of honor himself. Dr Maszlee Malik gave an inspiring speech to the audience about how we all should dream big and strive to reach those dreams even if we are faced with hardships. Upon finishing his speech, the Minister of Education officially launched the Tan Sri Dr Omar Harmony Award.

After the launch of the award, the three finalists were presented with their awards. MindFlu won 3rd place while SEP won 2nd place and Dynamic Youth 2.0 won 1st place and walked away with RM 1000 to fund their project.

After the presentation of awards, the guests went for a short lunch break and went to block G afterwards. At the main entrance to Block G, Dr Maszlee Malik officiated the opening of Block G and this marked the end of the ceremony.