Brunei Chevening Youth Forum

On the 6th-8th of November 2015, The Brunei Chevening Alumni organized a Brunei Chevening Youth Forum. The audience ranged from secondary school pupil to young adults from the age of 16-27 years old. The project aimed to create a platform for Brunei Chevening alumni members to engage in a dialogue with the youth. The objective was to leverage on alumni expertise, experience and influence to inspire the young generation to participate in contributing to the development of Brunei and the Global economy, particularly through the Sustainable Development Goals.The forum was the first to bring together up to 180 youth representatives at the national level aged 15 to 27.

Several foreign speakers were invited to be the guest speakers for the forum. Two Chevening Alumni from Malaysia and one from Singapore were invited to speak on different topics as well as help conduct various workshops that were to be carried out during the forum.

From Malaysia, Wan Djawad, a committee member with the Chevening Alumni Malaysia and Kiu Jia Yaw a fellow Chevening scholar from the year 2013 were invited as guest speakers. From Singapore, a Chevening scholar from year 2012, Kun Shan, attended as guest speaker as well.

The trip to Brunei for the three speakers began with a reception held at the residence of His Excellency David Campbell, the British High Commissioner in Brunei.

The forum itself took place the following day and was officiated by the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports, Yang Berhormat Pehin Datu Lailaraja Major General (Rtd) Dato Paduka Seri Haji Halbi bin Haji Mohd Yusoff. The event was well covered by local media representatives.

The program itself was divided into six different sessions. The six sessions were a forum paneled by among others, Kun Shan the Singaporean Chevening scholar. The forum discussed the role of youth in effective participation to improving the world. Malaysian Chevening scholar, Jia Yaw took the lead for the second session presenting his work on social enterprises.

Another panel discussion takes place during the third session focusing on engaging youth to vision 2035, a vision set by the Brunei government to stimulate economic growth through improvements of various sectors.

The next two sessions were group sessions to discuss the sustainable development goals followed by various workshops conducted by guest speakers and other invitees. Wan Djawad conducted a workshop on entrepreneurship while Jia Yaw conducted a workshop on leadership.

The sixth and final session of the day was a youth panel where invited youth leaders, starters and doers talk about what it means and what it takes to transform ideas into actions. Paneled by Wan Djawad, Khairunnisa Ash’ari from Brunei and Muhd Firdaus Ismail, also from Brunei, they all discussed their experiences in starting a youth or social projects and taking it to where they are now.

All in all, it was an excellent and rewarding experience to be engaging with so many young people with so much passion and drive and help them channel that correctly towards their ambitions.