Last year, I remembered vividly that my boss approached me and asked whether I can structure and organize a CSR program for the young to promote our profession and STEM. What I thought was: I have no idea how to get one done, but that is one fun stuff to try. So, let’s do it! Since then, we brainstorm together to come out with a module that we think the young generation will understand and not be bored (not to get too technical).

The program is to approach the young generation, especially those in secondary school (Form 3 and Form 5) to create awareness about the professional field of architecture and engineering.

We had some brainstorm on the name for the program as well. At last, we settled with the name called “The Future Builders”. We think that this name carries the essence of both audiences and also the speakers. The young generation is definitely the future’s builders that will take charge and run the world as we speak. As for the speakers, we are trying to inspire and make the knowledge more accessible to them. Therefore, we hope to influence more youngsters to take up STEM education before their tertiary study. At the very least, they have a basic understanding of it.

After some research on the current study trend, we found out that our secondary school STEM students had dropped significantly, which is less than 50%. In my personal perspective, it happens as we see the trend (where we can make big bucks) are with the finance and businesses. Nonetheless, for some schools, we do not see any trend of STEM students dropping. From a recent interview with the different board of professionals, Malaysia will need more architects and engineers by 2020, but from the growth we have now, it is near impossible to hit the target. Moreover, with the drop of STEM secondary students, we can predict that we may not ever meet the demand and Malaysia will need to depend on foreign labor even for professional jobs.

Another thing that we want to highlight is about our future built environment. We would want our living homes to be safe, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing. Thus, it is critical for us to create awareness for the young generation to understand the importance of understanding the built environment and how relevant it is to their future life. We had encountered several building failures news lately in Malaysia and this had raised people nerve, wondering why this is happening more often than before. Besides blaming on the power of social media, building failures and accidents on construction site are not rare. Despite on looking at the accidents and pointing fingers at different parties, why don’t we start from now and create better buildings for the future? That had become one of our core value for the CSR program.

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For the year 2017, we had managed to organize 4 talks in different schools.

Chung Ling High School

My alma mater, this was where I spent five years to have my secondary school education. The trip back to the school and giving a talk to my juniors is surreal. I still remember the time that I was sitting there, listening to some seniors talking on the stage, and now the role had changed. How I get the opportunity for this? Before the event, like months ago, I approached my teacher, currently promoted to Deputy Principal of the school, Ms. Tan Lon Eng to seek advice whether the school is interested with such topic of sharing. Finally, the principal agreed and welcomed us for an hour plus a session with the Form 3 students. Right after the sharing session, we had a closed session with a selective of Form 5 students to have a QNA session with them. They were very enthusiastic and asked different questions about the practice and some guides to pursue on tertiary education.

On our way to Penang from KL, that was the signature Penang Bridge.

Facing the students, since it was near to school holiday. There were less crowd.

Sharing in a casual mode and the students liked it.

A closed session with Form 5 students.

The team with the school principal, Mr. Soo and also Chairman of School Parents' Association, Mr. Png.

With my beloved Ms. Tan Lon Eng, who made this happened.

Selfie with the excited juniors.

My boss wanted a memorable shot so taking the signature building of my alma mater as the background.

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Kun Cheng High School

I was lucky to know a teacher in the private school, which happened to be my best buddy since matriculation college. I approached him to seek permission from the school to make such talk and the school approved as they also wanted to promote STEM education to the Form 3 students. The school capacity was insane with approximate 450 students for each form. For our session, we had almost all the students in the lecture hall to listen. We were quite nervous as that was our first and with such crowd. Nonetheless, we overcame it after a few slides and continued with a more confident tone. The students were understanding and critical as well, especially on their questions. They were the most proactive group in comparison to all the schools we went so far. They were brave to throw questions at us and dare to challenge. We loved the spirit and tried our best to give them the best answer and perspective. The school was happy with our contribution and looked forward for more future collaboration. Hopefully, we get to come again this year and present a better version of materials.

Insane crowd and first time to have two frontage presentation, not easy as I need to turn back and front to face both crowds. LOL

Some interaction with the audience, bright young kids!

My boss answering to some questions thrown by the students.

The prefects that helped with the discipline of the audience. Thanks, you all did a great job!

That was a panaromic shot for the venue.

With the school principal, Ms. Gooi (eldest lady in the middle), the Head of Physics, Mr. Tan (most right guy, thanks to him as he was the one arranged all these), Ms. Leong (the lady in stripes, Head of Academic, she's the one arranged the students and venue for us, thanks!!), Mr. Ooi (my best buddy in red! Thanks for helping me connecting with the school).

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SMJK Chan Wa 1 & 2

Based in Seremban, SMJK Chan Wa 1 was my boss’s alma mater. We approached both Chan Wa schools to see whether the schools were interested with the sharing topic. The schools happily agreed with our proposal and invited us to do the sharing. For SMJK Chan Wa 2, the deputy principal of the school was my boss’s class teacher and they chatted along after the talk. While SMJK Chan Wa 1 happened through a recommendation by my boss’s ex-classmate and happened to be the committee of the parents’ association for the school. The sharing went on well with great interaction between the students and the speakers. For SMJK Chan Wa 2, the teachers also participated in the QNA session which amazed us.

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Chan Wa 2 photos

The audience along with teachers.

Speakers' self introduction.

The QNA session with the students.

Enthusiastic teacher also participate in the QNA.

My boss with his class teacher.

Some fancy post by the students.

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Chan Wa 1 photos

Using the new lecture hall, pretty comfortable.

The audience listened tentatively.

Serious bro, taking notes! I respect that.

Another session in the library with another group of students, as the hall cannot cater the whole form.

Interaction with the kids.

Group photo with the chairman of School Parents' Association and also the teacher in charge.

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This is a summary post on our official Facebook page on what we had done in 2017.

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Some lessons that we picked up along the way:

1-Try not to speak with prepared speech as this will spoil the interactive-ness of the speaker with the audience.

Students gave feedbacks that we performed very much like a machine when we had our paper on hand in comparison with the QNA session where we interact directly with them. They loved the speakers to speak without the paper on hand and can focus on the audience. That was our first attempt in Kun Cheng and after that, we were able to share by just looking at the slides.

2-To prepare clear and simple slides with simple message per slides.

This is because some schools may not have good facilities that enable a large group of students to have a good view of the presentation. This also helped the speakers to remember the key points on every slide, as most of them are already on the slides.

3-Try to make the slides as graphical as possible.

People are less stimulated by long words and huge numbers. Whereas good graphics can attract audience’s attention and create a better impact. It is also important to choose images that are familiar and relatable to the audience, if not it will be an awkward situation. This is no good as the speaker may not able to deliver the message intended.

4-Think of some stories that relate and insert into the presentation.

People love to hear stories, especially those stories that happened to the speakers themselves. Try to find stories that are inspiring and make them relatable to the topic. That will increase the impact of the presentation and people will remember the story along with the value.

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We realized there is a gap between the professional practice with the young generation. There are questions like:

1. How to appreciate architecture aesthetic value?
2. How much do engineers and architects earn?
3. How long the engineers and architects work?
4. How do architects and engineers work together to complete a building design?
5. When a building suffers from failure (minor to major structural failure), who is responsible?
6. What kind of qualification needed to take up architecture and engineering degree course?
7. What kind of character and personality suit these professions?
8. What are the challenges being engineers and architects?
9. We already have so many housing around (in Malaysia), why should we still build more?
10. When we reach max capacity of land use, what’s the role of the architect?
11. How to make sure a building design is safe?

These are pretty simple but critical questions for us and we brought this back to think about the best answers and response we can provide to the audience. I will do a part 2 post to give my responses to these questions. I welcome everyone to try answering these too :)

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The reason I share this through #archisteem is that I hope with the help of the community from Steemit, I am able to approach to more schools in 2018 and helped more youngsters to understand more about our built environment and become a future builder!

With that, I want to open up for requests from anyone (preferable within Malaysia) to propose schools that are interested to have such talk. I am happy to communicate and see whether we can make this happen.

I will also link my #archisteem's post contribution with the #thefuturebuilders's official Facebook page. This will increase the exposure of the contents to more audience and in another way, it promotes Steemit as well!

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The Future Builders Official Facebook Page

Anyone interested to collaborate with us, please feel free to contact me via Facebook or Steemit.

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This is an #archisteem post.

A new tag that is to curate our existing built environment and also future built environment development. Want to know more? Read here.

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Find me at @kimzwarch