Projek57 : Celebrating Differences & Diversity
Welcome to an all new Head’s Up. This week, we are sharing with you our chat with Syed Sadiq Albar, co-founder of social enterprise, Projek57 and his focus on cultivating unity among Malaysians in these trying times.
To support Projek57, visit https://www.projek57.com/shop/
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By Poojalexmi,
Co-Founders, Colin Swee and Syed Sadiq Albar decided to create a social enterprise called Projek57 in 2015 to focus on cultivating unity among Malaysians and empower more people, particularly the underserved.
The social enterprise claims to be non-political and non-partisan with a focus of empowering Orang Asli youths and helping the underprivileged.
“We share the vision of our 1st Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman - “Our future depends on how well many different kinds of people can live and work together”. We aspire to create a Movement of Hope of 1,000,000 Rakyat Malaysia proud to be Malaysian and standing together in Unity,” the co-founder says.
As a seasoned social enterprise, Projek57 has gone through their fair share of trials. They have had to prove the social enterprise is self-sustaining in order to work on more impactful projects. To keep the engine running, they created a range of merchandise such as t-shirts, unity ribbons, totebags and face masks. They were also able to collaborate with companies, organisations and corporates to sustain their business.
They have also had to assure clients that they were in it for the long run in the beginning of their journey. As longevity creates credibility, Sadiq explains how startups should believe in what they are doing and stay persistent.
“You just have to keep at it and you actually have to believe in what you have set up. We believe in what we set out to do and we love what we do,” he says.
He urges founders and startups to better understand potential customers and seek out like-minded people. It is important so set aside any biased perceptions about people and be open-minded as you will come to realise that more people share your views and are willing to work alongside.
Fortunately, Projek57 has had the opportunity to meet such like-minded companies that opened up opportunities for the social enterprise to carry out talks and webinars. Based on his experience, Sadiq recalls the compassion corporates have towards patriotism and the importance of building a united team.
“Organisations have in their mind the kind of people that they need but you realise as time goes on, expectations of the company and employees’ expectations tend to differ," he says.
The pandemic has also brought on a different set of issues that called for Projek57’s adaptations. With factories being closed and plans for a new range of merchandise thwarted, Projek57 had no choice but to pivot.
Being a determined social enterprise, they reached out to a few other social enterprises to give out unity ribbons, cookies and pouches to frontliners as a token of appreciation during Hari Raya 2020.
Protecting the Future
Although Projek57 appeals to a wide audience, their main target are the youth. The social enterprise conducts workshops where they highlight and talk about many topics including aspirations.
Having travelled around Malaysia, Sadiq realises that the views, problems and aspirations of teenagers are the same everywhere.
He also voiced out on how he realised the programmes they collaborate on are able to break barriers. For instance, a particular project required them to guide Taylor University’s Business School students to run a social enterprise and grade them on it.
From a rocky start with disengaged students, they came out gaining experience enthusiastically and more open to working with each other.
These programmes also lead them to youths that are immediately enthusiastic like the students from Sekolah Menengah Sains Dungun. He recalls them lining up along the school gate, waving their flags as his team and he cycled in Terengganu during the Unity Ride 2017. They did so without any prompt from the teachers and were allowed to organise it.
On top of that, Projek57 is a safe place for youths to talk about race relation and upbringing. With no judgements, these youths are free to talk and ask about the questions they are curious to know instead of making an assumption over something they do not understand.
Sadiq also explains what we practice at home is equally as important since kids grow up as a reflection of their parents. “Instead of worrying about making a change outside, focus on your home first so people can see that and know that it is how it should be,” he says.
Challenging Tenacity
Sadiq highlights the challenges faced by Orang Asli which includes environmental issues such as logging and the lack of access to proper education.
“Some of them are unaware of the qualifications they have. They believe they only qualify for menial jobs because they ended their formal education before graduating.”
Another area of concern is how the treatment towards the Orang Asli community has made them feel insecure and out of place. “I blame us, the urban people to think that this is the right way but you realise we are not able to solve everything,” says Sadiq.
For example, a formal education might not equip the Orang Asli people to be able to live the way they live. They needed to be provided with farming skills or marketing their own products instead of only selling it to a wholesale.
Doing their part for the Orang Asli people, Projek57 provides opportunities by working with youth development centres particularly SOLS 24/7, a non-profit organisation. Projek57 also focuses on providing education, interpersonal skills such as business, sales and marketing skills to the youths.
The social enterprise is also in collaboration with several universities to provide scholarship opportunities to the Orang Asli youth.
Projek57 also aids the youth by enhancing their entrepreneurial skills and equipping them with the experience in case they chose the path of an entrepreneur. Although not everyone comes in with work experience, Sadiq explains that the idea is to work with an organisation that can better equip you on how to better communicate, carry out basic accounting, and utilise a computer or to do a presentation if you decide to take that plunge.”
One such person with the drive is Miri Adek who started as a student in the youth development centre. Eventually, she became the Head English teacher at the same centre and is now exploring a project with Projek57 to set up a school in Kelantan.
Ribbons of Hope
The Unity ribbon is an initiative that was created in 2018 as a small ticket for people to express their love and aspiration for the country. “You and I are different but our hopes, dreams and aspirations are the same,” Sadiq says. With a different theme each year, 2021’s theme would be “Maka Kami, Rakyat Malaysia”, the preamble of Rukun Negara.
The ribbons are made by Orang Asli who makes a living out the collaboration with Projek57. Any profit that Projek57 makes would go to their empowerment programmes. Unfortunately, the initiative does face challenges such as quality control issues like unaligned ribbon. Eventhough they could have easily had a factory supply the ribbons, Sadiq said they wanted it made by the community themselves.
They target to sell 50,000 or 100,000 ribbons but it is more important to be able to have more Malaysians show their support to the country. Although they want to distribute to more places, the ribbons are distributed to certain places and through their e-commerce platforms due to the pandemic. It will also be distributed through their collaborations with Pos Malaysia, Ben’s Independent Grocer and the recently confirmed collaboration with Grab Malaysia.
The ribbons can be purchased in every post office, grocers of Ben’s Independent Grocer and Grab’s selected merchants.
As generous as Projek57 is with our nation, Malaysians can show their support by buying the ribbon and engaging with their social media accounts, Instagram and Facebook. They are also open to more collaboration as they are accredited by Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC) and have tax exempt status.
Moreover, Projek57 is able to grow more and touch more lives by more funding. These funding would allow them to move forward with more plans such as Unity Ride 2 that would either happen at the end of the first or second quarter of 2022.
Unity Ride 2 comes with more exciting elements that include impact projects along with highlighting wonderful places. This would have them cycling from North to South of Peninsular Malaysia with necessary pit stops.
The Unity Ride showcases the theme of unity as they collect stories and memories with Malaysians of different race and religion.
“We should not only focus on our diversity but we should also celebrate our similarities as well.”
To support Projek57, visit https://www.projek57.com/unity-ribbon/
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