Voluntary efforts echo social causes at Sunway Diploma Studies

Students buried themselves in their assignments and studying for exams. There was a group of young people mostly from the Sunway Diploma Studies (SDS) of Sunway College who went beyond the norm of a typical online student learner. They volunteered to get involved with a Social Awareness Project on the issue of statelessness and education by each utilizing their skills and talents, remotely and virtually. They did this without necessarily knowing each other in the first place.

The students, who were introduced by their lecturer, are from the different programmes in SDS. In conjunction with an online forum “Stateless and Education” perspectives online webinar on 30th July, the students worked on several outputs such as video productions and a music video content creation, right from the music to the production.

Marcus Wong Li Yang and Charmaine Tee Xin Yi from Diploma in New Interactive Media (DINM) had compiled and produced a 1-minute heart-warming video clip of stateless Malaysian born kids and youths singing “Saya Anak Malaysia”.

Students from the Diploma in Information Technology (DIIT) programme, guitarist Muhammad bin Zainurin teamed up with his juniors Jayden Lee also guitarist and Mok Seow Tung on the keyboard, took time to learn an original song on the cause. They were set to record it in a studio but when the lockdown was announced and pro-longed, they resorted to recording their parts over the phones one by one. Once the music was recorded, the singer, Foo Sheau Wei from the VU programme at Sunway College, belted her heart out to deliver the sentiment of the themed song called ‘Belong’. It was indeed more challenging to create a musical output when the musicians could not come together physically but they manage to pull off a shorter version of the song with plans to record the full version once MCO is lifted.

The song was brought to life in an illustrated video created by DIIT student, Xuanao Zhao, together with Diploma in Computer Science (DCSI) student Joyce Ng Kar Yee who did a splendid job employing their video editing skills. Their video output emphasized the importance of education for stateless children.

All these outputs were contributed to the Stateless Family Support Group (SFSG) and will be featured at the “Statelessness and Education” perspective online webinar, a collaborative event between Sunway Diploma Studies and Victoria University Business Programme.

It is important for young people to be socially conscious and to use their innate talents and skills for positive pursuits, especially in relation to the sustainable development goals. Varied experience and exposure add on to students capabilities and credentials especially to enhance emotional intelligence attributes of students.