Bridging the Past, Present and Future (Malaysia)

Architects of Diversity Malaysia organized Bridging Past, Present and Future (BPPF) Short Course for 20 youth between the ages of 16-19 from all over Malaysia from 17 July to 25 September 2021. The project helped youth participants to identify how political and historical narratives are constructed in order to become better agents for greater empathy and tolerance in addressing Malaysia’s ethnic conflict. Throughout a bootcamp and multiple workshops, participants engaged with challenging content as well as interacted with historians and young politicians. They embarked on an independent capstone project at the end of the programme where participants researched or advocated for a current conflict or urgent issue in their communities. Let us highlight two of these projects:

Allison Choong, an 18-year-old student from Penang, said “I got to become amazing friends with other students from all corners of Malaysia who I would otherwise never, ever meet if it weren’t for this Short Course. My favourite discussion was about conflict resolution because it felt like I got to take a magnifying glass to another person’s brain and learn about their thought process”. For her capstone project, Allison made a 3-episode podcast series published on Spotify that discusses the challenges of the Penang art industry as a bridge to learn more about different communities and to highlight the importance of arts as a tool for conflict resolution. “I want to immerse my audience into the world of the arts. I want them to understand that the absence of the arts will be very detrimental to our society,” she said.

Muammad Syamel Haikal, an 18-year-old student from Putrajaya, created a website to track an ongoing environmental conflict in the Klang Valley. Reflecting on his project, he said “I managed to understand the complexity behind the forest situation in Klang and how opaque the forestry departments act when it comes to protecting forests. Initially, I thought it would be easy to accomplish my project of making our forest conditions more transparent, however, it slowly hit me that the data about our forests were incredibly difficult despite Klang Valley itself being a well-documented region when it comes to forests.” Overall, Syamel said “the short course had provided me a platform to make new friends and discover new ideas about Malaysia and the society in a fun environment”.