Thirty YES alumni from Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Tanzania, Thailand and Philippines, along with four American YES Abroad students hosted in Malaysia, convened in Kuala Lumpur for the YES alumni regional workshop: Changemaking Beyond Borders. This four-day workshop, held in May, was designed to provide alumni with knowledge and skills to promote and protect human rights, engage others in their communities and become effective advocates for social change.

The interactive workshop consisted of a series of discussions, panels, expert speakers and experiential learning activities through which participants explored the following topics: refugees, gender equality and marginalized communities, access to education, climate change and interfaith harmony. This was supplemented with sessions on social entrepreneurship and digital storytelling to provide alumni with tools to develop projects and/or awareness campaigns in their home communities.

Highlights included:

Speaker Brenda Danker from the organization Freedom Film Network screened a selection of digital stories for their session “Digital Storytelling: Social Films For Impact.” The Freedom Film Network (FFN) is a not-for-profit organization established to support and develop social documentary filmmaking within the context of freedom of expression and values contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). They also organize the KOMAS Freedom Film Festival (FFF), an annual human rights documentary film festival. Established in 2003, the Festival encourages first-time film makers to turn their winning proposals into films.

2006 YES alumna Yah Tyng Ng led a session on interfaith projects.  She introduced a project she helped organize --Projek Rumah Ibadat Kita -- an interreligious dialogue program where participants visited different places of worship and held discussions with religious leaders from several faiths.  She has also led numerous sessions on religion and religious diversity at YES orientation camps to prepare students before they depart to the USA.

A representative from PowerShift Malaysia delivered a session on climate change.  Powershift Malaysia is a youth organization whose mission is to empower youth in taking action on climate change by amplifying the voice of youth movements through education, public policy, workshops, youth camps, projects and other initiatives.

A cultural scavenger race around Kuala Lumpur was a fun and educational team-building activity! Participants were divided into teams and given tasks designed to help them learn about local culture, landmarks and religious diversity (visiting a mosque, Hindu temple etc.).

Alumni left with an understanding of how the selected topics are manifested in their home communities and best practices utilized by NGOs, community based organizations and their fellow alumni in engaging with these issues and working towards long-term solutions.

One participant reflected, “It really motivated me to do something for my community. I got some ideas about things that I can apply or try to do with my friends here. The materials I received here opened up my perspective on how to treat people with respect despite differences in faith and values. “

Congratulations to the YES Alumni Malaysia Committee for their hard work! Check out more workshop photos at their Flickr page.