1M4U programme to encourage youths to be involved in voluntary activities

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Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak

KUALA LUMPUR: The government would be launching the 1Malaysia Youth For You (1M4U) programme to encourage more young people to be involved in various voluntary activities, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

He said through this programme, Malaysian youths would get appropriate support to carry out activities that would benefit society, including through  the non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

“We will give them support and a little financial assistance to enable them to carry out such activities, for example, in preserving the environment.

“With this, we can light up the spirit and get more youths to be involved, which will have a positive impact on society. Besides that, we can spur more   (voluntary) activities through the NGOs” he said in an interview on Astro Awani’s Suara Kami 2012 (Our Voice 2012) programme aired last night.

Najib said this in reply to a question on government’s efforts to encourage the younger generation to join NGOs and not just focus on serving the public and private sectors.

The Suara Kami 2012 programme is an effort by Astro of going down to the grassroots throughout the country since early this year for the ordinary people to talk on their current quality of life and suggestions for improvement.

The views of various groups in society including padi and other farmers, fishermen, small and medium entrepreneurs, as well as from among the Generation Y from Perlis to Sabah were recorded through interviews or wall postings on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

A total of 120 selected respondents were invited to attend the Suara Kami 2012 set recording at the All Asia Broadcast Centre (Astro) in Bukit Jalil last Friday, without having prior knowledge that they would be meeting the prime minister in person and who would be responding to any question or suggestion posed.

To a question on the best way to get close to youths, the prime minister in a light-hearted moment, said: “We try to make it ‘lebih sempoi’ (simpler) but it has its limits.”

Najib said an interactive approach was important for this, considering that “today’s younger generation is different from that of the 1960’s”.

“Those days, they wanted ideological change, but today’s young people want to be part of the system. The crux is, we need to provide the opportunities to them.

“Opportunities for education, business, to be more creative….these, in my opinion, are the ways for us to understand the aspirations of the young generation,” he said. — Bernama