Kuala Lumpur, 15 September 2008: Two Malaysian schools have done the country proud with their nominations as finalists for the Mondialogo School Contest 2007/2008 to be held in Beijing later this month. Daimler and UNESCO announced the 50 best schools which includes participants from a total of 36 countries, amongst them Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan USJ 13 and Sultan Alam Shah Islamic College (KISAS) from Klang.
The contest, initiated by Daimler and UNESCO in 2003, is the largest global contest on intercultural dialogue. Currently in its third year, the contest aims to encourage dialogue between school students of different cultural origins, who work together across continents on a joint project: examples include musical works, plays, collages, photographic documentation, sculptures or Internet pages. Through the intercultural project work, school students are intended to develop understanding, tolerance and respect for people with different cultures, religions, languages and origins.
SMK USJ 13 partnered with team Camilo Torres from Bogota, Columbia while KISAS, partnered with Scoala generala cu clasele I-VII nr 7 Buzau from Romania. The Malaysian teams and their South American and East European counterparts, who have been working on projects dealing with environmental sustainability through education, will be meeting in person for the very first time in China to present their projects to an international jury. The jury will select the best three and announce the winners at a festive Award Ceremony.
Key criteria for the nomination were the intensity of the intercultural dialogue between the partner teams and the creative implementation of the projects. Areas of special focus in the current competition are “sport and fair play”, “sustainable future” and “cultural identity.”
SMK USJ 13 and Camilo Torres collaborated with WWF Switzerland to create a campaign called “A Dollar A Person”. The teams set up a blog to enable interaction while also highlighting their environmental efforts in the form of posters, poetry and prose. The website proved a success with over a thousand hits within three weeks.
According to Brindha Kanniah, 15, project leader from SMK USJ 13, although the language barrier was also a problem in the beginning, the teams managed to cope and ended up having an enjoyable experience.
“Although they had limited Internet access and resources, we enjoyed working with our Colombian friends. They helped me learn about conditions in their country,” said Brindha, who will presenting the details of the project in Beijing.
16 year old Zaiyah Masturah Mohd Yasin, the team leader of KISAS, did not face language barriers as both schools managed to communicate in English. KISAS project, entitled “Global Warming Through Education” aimed at increasing awareness on effects of global warming. .
An aspiring doctor, Zaiyah admits that she would really love to win but stressed, “The primary goal is to educate the masses about the dangers and reality of global warming. We need to save the world today for our future generations.”
Since its inception, a total of 60,000 school students around the world have participated in the Mondialogo School Contest. Ambassadors of the initiative include Brazilian author Paulo Coelho and Swedish writer Henning Mankell. In addition to the school contest, the Mondialogo initiative includes the Mondialogo Engineering Award to encourage intercultural dialogue among engineering students and promote knowledge transfer between industrialised and developing countries.
This year, 2,740 school teams with a total of 36,000 students between the ages of 14 and 18 from 144 nations took part. More than one third of the project groups come from Europe (980 schools, 35%) followed by 596 teams from the Asia and Pacific region (22%), 524 schools from Latin America and the Caribbean (19%), 356 schools from Africa (13%) as well as 237 schools from the Arab states (8%) and 47 schools from North America (2%).
