NGOs participate in Make Weekend

Foreign students who were here on a short exchange programme with the Sunway University were given an interesting challenge during a recent Make Weekend event. Some 35 students and 5 charity organizations were asked to work on key issues that are plaguing the Malaysian charity sector.


The five charity organizations covered various sectors of society – cats, elderly folks, Do Something Good volunteers, disabled children and single parents under Parents Without Partners. From 10am till 5pm the enthusiastic youths cudgeled their brains even as they interviewed each charity organization to get an idea of our problems galore.

Issues such as attracting and keeping volunteers and workers, digitizing paperwork and records, promoting and creating awareness, fund raising and monetizing crafts and the works of the charity recipients were among the many that cropped up in the brainstorming sessions.

Ideas flowed from creating a volunteer loyalty card with efforts rewarded with points exchangeable for reward items whether for the winner or the charity concerned, the digitizing of records and paperwork was also deemed a very good idea, to the point the team beat all the others for the top prize. Should be interesting to see if any one or party takes up this idea and develops it so that charity organisations here and globally can truly benefit from such innovative ideas.