Speeches

on 22 August 2009
at the Christian Ecumenical Centre, Jalan Stampin, Kuching

SDGA Exco members, Distinguished guests, members of the media, ladies & gentlemen

Good evening & salam 1 Malaysia 

1. On behalf of the Organising Committee, I would to welcome our Guest of Honour, YB Dato Sri William Mawan and all distinguished guests to the inaugral “SDGA DINNER & DAYAK EDUCATION EXCELLENCE AWARDS” 2009.
2. Since its establishment in 2001, SDGA has always given high priority to education as one of its core programmes and activities – in line with our mission to promote the value of good and quality education among Dayak particularly in Sarawak.
3. We believe that only by attaining quality education we can bring our Dayak community into the mainstream of development and are able to compete with other races in the world as Malaysia strives to be a developed country by the year 2020. 
4. As a young generation myself, I am very concerned to see some of our Dayak students and parents who are not taking full advantage of the vast education opportunities and financial assistance provided by our Government and institutions of higher learning. I am even more worried to see some of our Dayak students who are forced to drop out of school because of poverty, family problems and other related issues.  
5. Another important issue for us to ponder is regarding the marketability and employability of today’s Dayak graduates.  Do our Dayak graduates possess the relevant knowledge and right skills especially soft skills such as communication and analytical skills?  More importantly, a good command of the English language remains a necessary quality as well. Low level competencies among our Dayak graduates surely do not bode well for the future of the country.
6. All the above issues need serious thinking and reflections among all of us particularly our Dayak leaders if we want our Dayak community to be able to compete in today’s fast-paced and highly competitive environment.  Therefore, it is very important for us to work together irrespective of our differences to ensure the sustainability of our Dayak community.
7. On behalf of the Organising Committee members, I would like to thank our SDGA President, Dr. Dusit Jaul for his leadership and guidance towards making this dinner a successful and meaningful event.  We are committed to work together with you to achieve our goals which we have set in the SDGA’s Strategic Direction Framework during our retreat in March this year.
8. I also would like to express my appreciation to all SDGA committee members for their commitment and dedication in helping to organize this dinner within a short period of time. 
9. To conclude, I would like to all of us to reflect on a famous quote by Alvin Toffler: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”.

Thank you and have a pleasant evening.

Talking Points

Yang Berhormat Dato Sri William Mawan Anak Ikom
Minister of Social Development & Urbanisation, Sarawak

at the

SDGA DINNER & DAYAK EDUCATION EXCELLENCE AWARDS
(DEEDS) 2009

22 August 2009 (Saturday)

Christian Ecumenical Centre
Jln. Stampin, Kuching

_____________________________________________________________________________________
 

Yang Berhormat Datuk Joseph Entulu Belaun

Deputy Minister of Rural and Regional Development

YBhg. Dr. Dusit Jaul, President SDGA

YBhg Dato Sri Daniel Tajem and Datin

YBhg Dato Sri Edmund Langgu and Datin

Professor Dimbab Ngidang, Founder President SDGA

Mr. William Nyigor, President DBNA
 
Mr. Edwin Tawie, Organising Chairman
 
Distinguish Guests, members of the press, Ladies and Gentlemen.

 
 
Ladies and gentlemen,
 

1. Thank you to SDGA President and his executive committee for inviting me to be your Guest of Honor this evening. I have no qualm about being your Guest of Honor as I know SDGA has good intention and noble objective in organizing this dinner.
    
2. I was informed by your president that this evening dinner has the following objectives.

   - To raise fund so as to enable the association to implement its various programs

   - To recognize Dayak students who have excelled in their PMR and SPM exam last year

   - To officially launch the association’s redesign website.
    

3. In my message for the SDGA souvenir programme, I touch on education. Tonight I would like to elaborate further on this subject, because I consider it is too important a subject for a community like ours.
    
4. Sarawak’s rural areas, where the Dayaks reside, I must admit, are among the poorest today.   Development is needed in all aspects of their daily life, ranging from agricultural production, health care and technology to environment and education.5. Education is therefore, a must in the process of creating change and development.  In this respect, the teacher is the key person. With patience, commitment and dedication, he should be able to take the challenges of development by bringing education to the rural areas.
    
5. Firstly there must be more schools equipped with up to-date state of the art and more teachers qualified in their subjects. This is important because there are teachers who are asked to teach   subjects that they are not proficient at.
    
6. Indeed education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. But for us we are not going to change the world per se; rather we want to change our community, our mindset. 
    
7. People everywhere need education, because it is believed to be the only means towards a secure job and a decent future as well as towards progress and development.
    
8. Nelson Mandela, the well-known statesman once said: “Education is the great engine to personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of mine, that the child of a farm worker can become the president of a great nation.”
    
9. I concur with what the former president of South Africa said. Yes we have children of poor farmers, rubber tappers and rural dwellers, who have now PhD holders, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants and many hold other professional occupations.
    
10. But the number of our graduates is insignificant as compared to graduates from other communities; the Dayak community is still lagging far behind in fields of medicine, pharmacy, engineering, accountancy and law. In spite of the lack of data and statistic, we know we are way behind.
     
11. As envisaged by the Sarawak Dayak Graduates Association, there must be at least 10 graduates coming out from one longhouse or village out of more than 7,000 longhouses in the State by the year 2020.
     
12. I believe this projection can be achieved if only every one of us can work together- the parents, the teachers, the non-governmental organizations like SDGA, SDNU, SADIA, DBNA and OUNA and Dayak leaders in the various political parties.
     
13. SDGA has now started its programmes of capacity building, motivational talks, excellence awards, and so on. Let us all support its programmes. This is the only way where we can help to change the mindset of parents and students in the rural areas.
     
14. As I said, parents should be the first to show concern about the future of their children. In fact we should never neglect pre-school education. It is on the hands of parents lie the direction and destiny of children especially in the first seven years of the children’s life.
     
15. In other words, education begins at home. Parents are their role models and whatever parents do they will follow.

    This is not only going to rob the children of a bright future, but it is going to create more problems for the children and the community and society in later years. I have seen some children who lack parental guidance becoming scavengers looking for something in the dustbins. I am sorry to say the majority of them are Dayak children.

    Ladies and gentlemen,
     

16. I must praise SDGA for having a good rapport with government leaders. More things we can do together to uplift the standard of education of the rural people. On this score I would like to suggest SDGA to initiate a study to find how many Dayak graduates are there in various fields and their occupations.
17. Since my ministry is involved in social development, I am prepared to work together with SDGA. I believe that the findings of this study are not only an indicator of our educational and social progress, but such findings can be of great importance to the government. After knowing where the weakness lies, the government can come up with a master plan to address the issue.  Let this study be one of your 2010 activities.  Thank You.
     

 22nd August 2009

The Christian Ecumenical Centre, Kuching

1.  Yang Berhormat Dato’ Sri William Mawan anak Ikom
   Minister of Social Development and Urbanisation
    
2. Yang Berhormat Datuk Joseph Entulu Belaun
   Deputy Minister of Rural and Regional Development
    
3. YBhg Dato Sri Daniel Tajem and Datin
    
4. YBhg Dato Sri Edmund Langgu and Datin
    
5. Professor Dimbab Ngidang, Founder President SDGA
    
6. YBhg Datuk Hajjah Pengiran Juliana Bte. Pengiran Tambi
   Chairman, Yayasan Ikhlas Malaysia
    
7. Mr. William Nyigor, President DBNA
    
8. Mr. Edwin Tawie, Organising Chairman

Distinguish Guests, members of the press, Ladies and Gentlemen.

A very good evening to all!

First of all, I would like to acknowledge that it is really my pleasure to have ALL of you here this evening. This is going to be a special evening. I say special evening because:

Number 1: All of you who are present here this evening are very special people; You are the people who are fully dedicated and committed towards education, the education of our children and the educational attainment of our community. This is a lovely Saturday evening; you could have chosen to be elsewhere. However, because of your commitment towards education, you all choose to be with us.

Some of you come from near; some come from far, like our friends from Bintulu. This dinner is also supported by many non Dayak individuals and companies, like my good friends from KTA. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we’re here truly practicing the spirit of 1Malaysia. During this difficult time, all of you willingly part with your hard-earned dollars and cents. You all deserve my highest respect for what you stand for.

Number 2: This evening in a way is special because it has been quite a while since the SDGA organized this kind of fund raising dinner. Therefore, to ensure that this dinner is of value, other than enjoying good food provided by Aroma Café, our fellow Dayak caterer and restaurant operator, we in SDGA have slotted two significant events; i.e. Dayak Educational Excellent Award (DEEDS) and the launching of our redesign SDGA website.

The Educational Excellent Award is SDGA’s way of giving recognition to Dayak students who have excelled in public examination. Tonight, recognition is given to such students from Kuching and Kota Samarahan Divisions. Students in other divisions who have excelled in public examination need not worry as recognition will also be accorded to them.

Shortly later, we will launch our redesign website. The interesting thing about this redesign website is that it is user friendly. It provides facilities for online application to be a member of SDGA. Dayak graduates, especially those outside Sarawak should find this website useful.

From the specific on this evening’s program; distinguish guests, ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to venture into something that is more general.

Briefly, I will share with you what we in SDGA have planned for the association in order to serve our community more effectively. Then later, I will venture to talk about a subject that is not new to us; the importance of education.

YB Dato’, Ladies and Gentlemen,

This evening, I’m sure many of you are asking, “What is it about SDGA that is new, and that we all must support?

One thing for sure is that, we in SDGA, like all of you who are gathered here this evening, have one thing in common; we are Committed Towards Community Excellence. Now, to ensure that we remain committed towards our cause of community excellence, the current committee members headed by myself who took over in February this year, have came out with a Framework Development paper for SDGA. This framework paper spells out SDGA’s future direction in the next eleven years; up to 2020.

Our dinner this evening is part of our fund raising programme. From this dinner, with your kind support, we expect to raise certain amount of income to enable us to implement the various educational and career development programs. This year alone, we need RM40, 000.00 to enable us to implement our various educational and human capital development programs. 

On this score, I wish to put on record our sincere appreciation to our leaders: YB Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Alfred Jabu who had given us RM20, 00.00, YB Dato’ Sri William Mawan RM5, 000.00 and YB Dato Dr. James Dawos RM2,000.00.

This evening, ladies and gentlemen, somehow, I have the feeling that more will come from our caring leaders.

In the short period that we have been in the committee, we have embarked upon a number of programs such as:

• Motivational program involving more than 100 students and parents from three secondary schools in Kapit.
• Parenting talk in Rh. Anggah, Sg Lengan, Sibu
• Program Motivasi UPSR in Krokong, Bau, involving more than 80 students from five primary schools in the Krokong area.

YB Dato’ Sri may wish to take note that our next immediate program is in Pakan at the end of next month.

Y. B. Dato’, Ladies and gentlemen,

I am not one to blow trumpet. Not withstanding this, I can confidently say that SDGA had started to make an impact. This evening, I stand proud in front of you to inform you that our brothers and sisters; the Dayak in Kalimantan Barat and the Kadazandusun in Sabah are very keen to set the same for their people. Personally I have met with some of their leaders and they are keen to follow the footstep of SDGA by setting up similar association for their respective communities.

This brings me to another point, our common belief and realization as to the importance of education.

I believe for the Dayak, our day of reckoning has come; that we Dayak simply cannot afford NOT to treat education as our top priority. In all corners of the globe, we hear people talk about the rising importance of education. To us in SDGA, it means one thing; it reflects the new demand of the new world.

In the context of Malaysia, we all know that we have migrated to the Knowledge-based Economy in the year 2000. In the Knowledge-based Economy, it is a kind reminder that, where we live, and what we do, doesn’t really matter. What matters most is what we KNOW. If we look around, more and more jobs are demanding for higher level of educational achievement and training. So if we’re not equipped with proper education and skill, where is our place in society, and in this country? Without proper education, how can we compete?

 It is pertinent that if we Dayak are to progress collectively as a community, we all have to ensure that every Dayak child, children and youths are well educated. Every Dayak youth must be equipped with a degree. If not a degree, to me, industry certification will do.

YB Dato’, ladies and gentlemen.

I am coming towards the end of my speech. Before I leave this rostrum, I have one final point to emphasize, and this is a very important one.

We all fully understand that survival and success in this 21st century depends very much on our success in education. This evening, let me share with you my vision of Dayak success in education. My empowering vision of Dayak success in education is that:

Number one: Every Dayak child, children and youth must have access to, and achieve world class education.

Number two: Our community must own and operate a University of our own. This University is NOT exclusive. This University which is inclusive must produce quality Dayak graduates annually, especially in the professional disciplines.

YB Dato, Ladies and gentlemen,

As long as we don’t realize the above, we Dayak will still be asking, “Why is it that other ethnic groups are outperforming us in education”?

Me and my committee members hope that when our tenure is over, and the record is written and told, I don’t want it to be written and told that we have not warned our Dayak community as to how crucial is education for our survival and progress. For this very reason, it is fitting indeed that tonight’s dinner has adopted “Education is the Seeds of Life” as its theme. The seeds of education have to be planted first in our home. The starting point is our family. For in our family, lies the hope of our children who seek to become engineers, lawyers, teachers, accountants, doctors, etc. Let us then, have faith in ourselves and move forward with confidence and optimism.

What Mr. Edwin Tawie, the Organising Chairman and his committee have done this evening is a small step in the right direction. Mr. Edwin, you and your committee members have done a good job, you deserve my fullest appreciation and thanks.

Above all, Yang Berhormat Dato’ Sri, distinguish guests, ladies and gentlemen; You all are great people.  Without your support and commitment, we won’t be gathered here this evening. My sincere appreciation and my words of thanks go to you all.

Thank you, and have a pleasant evening.