MAYBANK FOUNDATION – PERDANA LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION WRITING & PHOTO CONTEST 2015
More than 4,000 students
responded to our call for
essays and photos!
The Maybank Foundation – Perdana
Leadership Foundation Writing and
Photo Contest 2015 themed “Empowering Youth for a Better Asean” ended
at the end of September 2015 with
more than 3,900 written submissions
and more than 3,000 photos from young
Malaysians from all over the world.
The fiction and essay category had
entries that ranged from science fiction
to serious contemplations of current issues, while Instagram photos with the
contest hashtag #AYAcontest2015
(Asean Youth in Action!) depicted
youth in various activities, from sports
to dance to community work.
With more than RM350,000 in cash
prizes alone and up to fifty prizes per category, the contest offered many young
Malaysians between the age of 13 and
21 the chance to be rewarded for their
essay, fiction and photo-essay. This is the
second Perdana Leadership Foundation
and Maybank Foundation collaboration
and the first time that the organisers are
inviting fiction and photo submissions,
making it one of the first nationwide contests for young fiction writers.
The contest ran from May to September 2015. At the launch of the contest in June, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad,
Fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia and
Honorary President of Perdana Leadership Foundation, lamented the lost art
of writing and encouraged young Malaysians to take the trouble to master
communication skills. “We are in danger of losing the art of writing. Young
people today use abbreviations when
sending text, to the extent that words
are written according to sound and not
meaning. For example, ‘for’ is shortened
to ‘4’ while ‘you’ to ‘u’. It is fun as you can
compress long messages into just a few
letters. But over time, we lose the art
of writing which is precious. I hope that
young people will seriously go back to
writing properly. My suggestion is that
we should master the art of writing and
the art of communication,” he said after
launching the contest.
In August, workshops on writing and
photo-journalism were held in Kuantan,
Penang, Kuching and Batu Pahat, which
taught the rudime