I was invited to conduct two sessions of Communications and Technology to 23 ASEAN women leaders at a recent Harpswell ASEAN Program in Women’s Leadership. This is my third year with Harpswell.
The leadership program for young professional women is held in partnership with KANITA and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).
Participants are flown to Penang from their respective countries in Southeast Asia i.e. Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore–plus Nepal.
For almost two weeks, the selected young leaders would attend lectures and participate in workshops that cover a wide range of topics, for instance gender issues, critical thinking, Southeast Asian geography and society, civic engagement, public speaking, communication and technology, and women’s health. They’d also visit places in and around Penang–Women’s Centre for Change (WCC), George Town World Heritage Site, Mengkuang Titi Village.
Diverse backgrounds, United front
Every year, including this year, the participants impressed me with their effort, ingenuity and #ONEcause. The social changes that they’re pushing under #ONEcause as a collaborative effort–working as a team of 3-4 members from different countries.
The above photos shows the website presentations by the teams. Social changes they’d like to see happen are on several fronts–access to books, to education in remote communities, child sexual abuse, safe shelters for domestic violence victims and nutrition for the next generation (food security included).
The participants had less than 12 hours to build a website from scratch! Strong will, great talents and good use of technology have made this possible.
Planting the seeds for future ASEAN partnership
During the sessions, I shared several collaborative tools including promotional and video creation tools. The young leaders are already quite media savvy using several tools such as Instagram, Whatapps, Youtube in addition to Google Drive -as shown big in the word cloud below.
I also wanted to share some cool productivity apps and workflows–great for working in organisations across borders. Plenty of web-based apps/tools to reach out to their global audience–something that would be interesting to explore–should they decide to do so (one day).
A lot to cover/share but time was not on our side. Perhaps next year 😉
In sum, seeds planted for future ASEAN partnerships during the two-week Harpswell ASEAN Program@USM. Diverse backgrounds yet united in offering solutions to challenges in ASEAN countries. Well done ladies!?
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