Extraordinary People Impacting Community

To all those ROCKY haters, This man is a GENIUS ! Kudos to Sylvester Stallone.

Now watch

So its been a long time since there has been any updates here but E.P.I.C has been making tremendous progress in the VYC movement which I hope to update you guys on in the near future. For now, some extraordinary individuals has decided to impact their community by starting their own VYC registration team. They started off with a BANG last weekend and will be continuing to do so for the next 2. All you Melaka home boys and girls reading this, go give them a hand, for details click here.

To know what happened, here is a detailed and interesting recollection of their first experience.

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Helping Melaka Voice their Choice

Last Sunday at about 3pm, I received an SMS from Dr Wong to remind the volunteers to wear black attire. I was already in town, wearing a purple blouse and dark blue jeans. I had prepared a white E.P.I.C T-shirt to change later. In my car, I actually had a black coat and a faded black home T-shirt-pyjama which I had brought back to wash in Batu Pahat. To follow the dress code without looking too formal, I decided to put on the latter………….. READ MORE

Youth ’10 was an event that we had been looking forward to in months. Out of all of our locations so far, we were eager to view the hyped and much talked about activities, grab freebies and meet people from all parts of Malaysia.

On the day of the event itself, we were surprised to see people had arrived before the official opening hours and were eagerly scanning the premises as early as 9am. With our booth set up and SPR ready to work, we got down to business and started approaching the crowd.

The response was better than expected; we were registering new voters all day, practically nonstop.

Youth of from all different walks of life came and joined us, asking about the campaign and telling us how they would like to improve and impact this country. It was refreshing to have people come up to us, without us even asking, and say

“Guys, I want to register as a voter”.

They were approachable, and would genuinely listen when we spoke (thanks!).

We had …

Pete Teo,

Aishah Sinclair and Henry Golding,

Rina Omar

Mooky (One Buck Short) and even Mukhriz Mahatir visiting and supporting this cause.

That caused a bit of a ruckus around our booth.

Plastered on our walls were random cut outs of speech bubbles, open for all to write on. The question posed was “How would you improve Malaysia?”. If there was one thing you would choose to change, improve or even remove, what would it be? Many people took the opportunity to voice their choices, and used this chance to tell the nation what they believe in.

A separate post will be up in with the comments.

Of course, there were the few that thought about registering, but decided not to in the end. Their reasons mainly revolved around distrust, fear and disbelief. We’re sure you’re all familiar with the saying “fear paralyzes people.” With all the issues you’d like to change, how will you be able to move forward when something is holding you back?

In comparison to our previous locations we also noticed that the younger crowd tended to shy away from the SPR team. As soon as they saw the SPR bunting next to ours, they looked at us differently. We’d like to take a moment to untangle the image that the youth may have of SPR. For three days they diligently stuck by us, registering visitor’s non-stop, taking no breaks with zero complaints while we stuck I.C.s into their faces. They worked efficiently and were accommodating – we honestly had a great team with us.

We had never registered so many people in any other location!

You guys were an inspiration. Thank you for uniting for a cause greater than ourselves. Thank you for being part of the 2 million Malaysians who are willing to make a difference.

Clearly, the youth do care.

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Special thanks to Khai Lee & Joel and team Youth Asia for giving us a booth at Youth ’10!

When I was young, whenever my parents would get into an argument I would try to stop them. However as many of us were told off, it was “none of your business”. So I just left and watched TV, read a book or listened to my music to drown out the noise, pretending everything is going to be alright, waiting till the situation calmed down, hoping that everything was going to be alright after all was said and done. Many parents and we do not realise that whenever we have fights with our family members, the entire home suffers. Arguments are rarely objective and issue driven. It might have been rational and reasonable in the start but once heated emotions came into the picture, then a discussion turns into an argument. No one likes to stick around or watch arguments.

Just recently the EPIC team was invited to the “Bloggers event of the year”, BUM2010 (Bloggers Universe Malaysia). Unfortunately, it was the bloggers event of the year only in the minds of those in POLITICS where most of the bloggers that we knew were unrecognizable to us.  To be honest, that event just scratched the surface of the blogging community. What happened to the food, fashion, youth, music, sports and lifestyle bloggers? Nonetheless, we learnt a ton full and would highly recommend others to go. In case you’re wondering, the EPIC team is all below 25 and are only recently finding out about Malaysian politics. So, this event was a definite eye-opener.

Sure enough, a question was raised that acknowledged that youth (18-30 in our books) bloggers do in fact command the blogger-sphere. The question was “what can we (the slightly “mature/experienced” crowd) do to engage or awaken the young bloggers to start rising up and spreading word on political issues?”

The answer came to us during that rather politically fuelled event. Towards the end of the event during the forum titled “Bloggers role in bridging the Religious Divide”, things indeed got heated up as expected from such an issue. To be honest, it was rather entertaining and exciting. But in all seriousness, it was quite a turn off and a reminder why so many youths are not going to enter or take interest in political issues, even though it is of utmost importance.

Similar to my childhood experience, after so many years of hearing useless and irrational arguments, we have learnt to filter the noise, and drown out the nonsense that is happening in our house. I believe everyone is optimistic at heart. Because this is so, we have an automatic self defence system that keeps ourselves from getting hurt. Just as your body builds stronger and bigger muscles with every tear it faces during exercise, our mind learns to buffer and filter out the negative atmosphere it faces.

What we see in Malaysian politics is ugly. Sadly, this is pointed out to us every day by the media and sometimes even by the very bloggers who want a positive change in this country. Every day we are faced with the ugly truth of how bad things are without a solution being suggested. This only brings out a sense of hopelessness that only brings a lot of us to despair causing many of us to choose to be ‘ignorant’ to things. The situation has got so bad that many of us are looking to run away from home, leaving this beautiful country for a supposed BRIGHTER future abroad. Why? Because all we see here is doom and gloom, pointed out by the very people that want the youth to rise up. Contrary to popular belief, the method of NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT is as outdated as the walkman, Dr Bombay and mullets. Simply because we have choices now, that is what the internet, globalisation and low cost airlines has given us, an endless amount of choices.

DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER HIM ?

So how do we give hope to the youth? Simply by showing that you have grown beyond race, religion-based issues and displaying that you have matured beyond what has happened in the past, simply because none of the us were born then. All the negative issues that are seemingly of race and religious issues are merely tied together by a fragile and vague past that the youths were not part of.  Most of us have been brought up in a racist environment not knowing why it is so in the first place. As far as we know, many friends whom we befriended in primary school of different ethnic backgrounds mysteriously grew apart with us as we grew older. I don’t think it was because they stole my rights, nor did they steal my land, nor did they take my job. These issues might have happened in the some misconstrued past, but why are we letting the negative emotions of the past trickle down the generations? Why are we allowing ourselves to brand common evil with a particular race?

Let us be sensible and not give in to the corrupt system that has leaked into our place by playing the same tune of race and religion being the separating issue between the haves and have not’s. Trying to solve societal issues based on race and religion is like dipping a white piece of paper into a bucket of black ink hoping it would come out colourful.

If there was a race we should care about it should be the HUMAN RACE. The rain falls on all of us without discriminating our colour. The only thing that defers is the size of our buckets; sadly many have small broken ones. Let us act upon this conviction and knowledge, realising  and understanding that poverty and misfortune does not discriminate.

We bleed the same

Let us as people of different ethnic backgrounds blind ourselves to colour and open our eyes to the needs of all Malaysians. If we are angry or displeased with another, voice your choice in a civil manner. Do not react but respond keeping in mind the ultimate goal that ALL OF US want, a better future and nation, for us and the generations to come. It is puzzling how all of us want that but somehow we get in each other’s way just because it isn’t your style. Just because you like rock and roll, don’t go discriminating the R&B fans and for goodness sake LEAVE THE BOY BAND LOVERS alone. Even though there are different genres of music, let us all agree on the fact that we all love music in its own unique form.

Let us find ways to unite not disunite. Highlight points of similarities not differences. If you do that, we, the youth will follow. If not we will continue to be in our own worlds while you can play in your own world that is fast heading into extinction.

You want change fast? Show us that you want it.

We have been asked many times “What is this voters’ registration exercise about? What do you hope to achieve through this? Which political party are you supporting? Who is behind this?”

And now, this is our response.

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The whole voter registration exercise is about ‘instilling hope once again and helping others believe. It is about voting in a servant hearted politician, it is about telling all others that we care, and showing that there are others who care as much as we do. it is about neutralising the power of corruption, racialism, racism, religious extremism and communalism, and it is about people knowing their rights to vote in their government.

EPIC does not have the power to change the government ‘only the people who VOTE do.’ Passing judgments, being skeptical, discouraged or even disillusioned over the actions of groups or certain people must not distract us from the reason why we do what we do. In the end it is not about what we have done that matters but really what we have become in the process. Have we matured as a person, a citizen, a community, and a nation?

Being neutral in this voter registration exercise is to be able to look beyond the political parties. It is not about seemingly siding Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat but about being FREE to choose to live the life we want. Being free to Voice your Choice!

~RM RICHARD