Students from SMK Tamparuli presenting their winning project.
KUALA LUMPUR: Shell Malaysia’s #ShellSelamatSampai School Challenge, awarded SMK Tamparuli from Tuaran, Sabah as its grand winner for 2019, at the grand finale which was held at Menara Shell yesterday. Themed “Empowering Youth In Promoting Road Safety Intervention”, the 2019#ShellSelamatSampai School Challenge aims to empower school students to embark on road safety projects that would contribute towards achieving zero road related accidents among youth and motorcyclists.
Five teams from five schools across Malaysia made it to the finals this year and pitched their road-safety projects to a panel of judges to compete for the national champion tittle. The teams were from SMK Convent Butterworth, Penang; SMK Riam, Miri, Sarawak, SM Sultan Abdul Halim, Jitra, Kedah, SMK Tamparuli, Tuaran, Sabah and SMK Luak, Miri, Sarawak.
SMK Tamparuli defeated four other finalists with their project that focuses on various road safety activities and competitions held in Tuaran. They also installed a traffic light in front of the school to ease traffic congestion, especially during student drop-off and pick-up time.
“We would like to extend our appreciation to Shell for giving us this opportunity to embark on this project which has enhanced the conditions related to road safety in our surrounding environment. This initiative has enabled us to work with the local authorities, communities and other schools to implement our project at a number of vicinities and we will continue to push to spread the awareness on our project and empower a larger group of the society to leverage our project towards achieving zero road related accidents,” shared the champion team who were ecstatic with their win.
Established in 2016, the #ShellSelamatSampai School Challenge, which comes under Shell’s #ShellSelamatSampai flagship initiative is a national level inter-school competition involving 25 schools throughout Malaysia. With the aim to improve road safety behaviours amongst youth and influencing their approach to road safety, this competition empowers school students to design, plan and conduct road safety projects that will benefit their schoolmates and their surrounding community.
“I am delighted to witness the innovative solutions that the students have come up with to curb road accidents in our country. I must commend Shell for empowering our youth by providing them an avenue and guidance to leverage technology to promote road safety to contribute in solving the daily road safety problems faced by the community,” said Dr Siti Zaharah Ishak, Director-General, Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS) who was the head of judge 2019 #ShellSelamatSampai School Challenge.
“This is an exemplary effort between public-private partnership for the sustainability of road safety in this country, and MIROS welcomes more partners to participate in this initiative” she added.
“Based on our research at Shell, we found out that a large number of road accident fatalities involve motorcyclists. We realised that road-safety awareness should be cultivated since young, hence we created this platform that empowers students to leverage on technology and innovation to design interventions that will contribute towards achieving zero road related accidents among youth and motorcyclists. It’s truly inspiring to see how these students work together to not just create innovative projects but also on getting them installed at their schools with the assistance of the school management and relevant authorities. This to me shows that, as a community we can all do our part towards ensuring that our road-related accidents are eliminated, all together,” explained Nimmi Kamal, General Manager of External Relations at Shell Malaysia.
Each participating team was given a start-up fund of RM2,000 to embark on a 12-week project implementation. A Shell mentor was assigned to each team to provide guidance to the teams accordingly. At the end of project implementation, the teams submitted their final report and the top five teams were shortlisted for the final project presentation in the Grand Finale.
The #ShellSelamatSampai School Challenge champions received a certificate, coveted trophy and a cash prize of RM10,000.
Dr Siti Zaharah Ishak, Director-General, Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS), Ajitpal Singh, Director, Road Safety Department Malaysia, Haji Rashid Bin Mean, Principal Assistant Director, Ministry of Education Malaysia and Mizi Ali Amat, Downstream and Retail HSSE Manager, Shell Malaysia were the judges of the 2019 #ShellSelamatSampai School Challenge.
A few months back, Shell Malaysia announced the winner of the #SSS Varsity Challenge 2019 at the grand finals which was held at the #mydigitalmaker Fair 2019.
Team Firecracker from Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) emerged the grand winner with their invention, a Change Lane Alert Assist (CLASs), which is an innovative solution to alert vehicle drivers against potential head-on collisions.
Since 1957, Shell Malaysia has been a strong advocate for the improvement of road safety culture amongst Malaysians.
For more information on #ShellSelamatSampai, visit https://www.shell.com.my/