By SHARMILA NAIR

alltherage@thestar.com.my

SOFIA Ong doesn’t believe in keeping quiet, especially when she has something important to say.

The A-Levels student has always been a firm believer in speaking up and encouraging others to voice out their opinions as well.

* Sofia Ong *

Right now, Sofia is lending her voice to empower not only herself, but other youths in her neighbourhood, state, country and eventually, the world.

“Young people should exercise their (right to) voice (opinions). We make about half of the world’s population so it is only fair that we have a say as to how things are run around us,” said Sofia, 19.

Although her dreams are big – she wants to get youths around the world to participate in the decision-making process around them – she prefers to start small.

Sofia is one of the few people in charge of the Junior Youth Empowerment programme that is currently active around the Damansara Jaya area in Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

The Baha’i-inspired programme aims to empower young people in the age group of 12 to 15 to become involved and contribute to the well-being of their communities.

“We organised the Crafts For The Community campaign to raise funds to refurbish the community’s recycling centre. And on top that, the programme also encourage and empower more people in the community to be environmentally friendly,” she said.

The project raised over RM600, which was used to re-paint the recycling centre.
“We wanted to make the recycling centre more inviting, to stand out more, so that more people would come and do their part for the environment.”

Apart from preserving the environment, Sofia is also very passionate about providing education for young people.

In November, Sofia attended the Global Youth Summit organised by the British Council in London. She was one of the 60 young people recognised for their positive contributions to the world.
“I heard about the summit and sent in my application hoping to be selected. I was shortlisted and the interview was actually conducted via Skype,” she said.

Sofia was in London for almost one week during which she worked and exchanged ideas with like-minded youth.

“It was really inspiring to see all these young people who wanted to do something for their communities and the world. They have so many sustainable projects that would benefit everyone in the long run.”

One of the many tasks Sofia had to complete during the summit was to choose a cause for which she and her teammates would create a specific project to run in their respective countries.

“My team members are from Britain, Brazil, Haiti, South Africa and Denmark. We chose education as our cause,” she said.

Sofia and her team members had noted that most young people today leave school being selfish – thinking only about themselves and how they can make money with their knowledge instead of using it to better the society.

“There is currently no place in school where we learn about contributing to society and how students can change their surroundings. My team mates and I came up with Globally Empowering Minds (GEM) which we hope would provide the solution to this problem.”

They have been working on it for about two months already and hope to come up with a good and sustainable project by the middle of this year.

“It is really important that we learn the right things in school because young people spend most of their time and develop their minds there.”