3R in Vietnam

For effective promotion of 3R campaign, the pilot project team of 3R-Hanoi produces a song and dance on the 3R. It is performed every where and by the youth with fun and excitement. Looking at the expression of the youth, I believe this generation is the hope for 3R success in Vietnam. I presume the chances of success is brighter by targeting the youth. Having said this, the approach must have interested them and allow space for them to emulate with ease and creativeness. Imposing on the youth with other generation's perception and value is right some time, but might not be effective as they do not share the same thinking.

Mottainai Fair

These are the pictures showing young volunteers at the Mottainai Fair at Hanoi, Vietnam. Mottainai means do not waste in Japanese. The fun-filled Fair featuring stalls managed by the youth is an environmental and education awareness campaign to promote 3R practice. It is an exchange and meeting place for used goods. It is interesting as public is bringing in their unwanted, but usable items such as clothes, hand bags and household ware for exchange. The collected items will then display in different stalls. Coupon equivalent with the value of the items is given instead of cash enabling the public to search for other wanted items at the stalls. Apart from that, various activities such as talent contest, singing, dancing, art competition and workshops are conducted. The programme is held as part of the 3R-Hanoi Pilot Project initiated by JICA and URENCO.

The Fair is a success due to its location nearby community centre with children activities, active participation of the stakeholders especially the youth, strong support from the resource person, variety of entertainment programmes and, of course innovation. Personally, i think the involvement of youth with much energy and enthusiasm makes the 3R Fair a highly success venture.

Social Marketing

I was impressed by the Vietnamese in promoting 3R initiative in Hanoi during my visit there recently. Instead of normal propaganda campaign by the Government agencies, they engaged the upcoming and popular young artist to be the spokesperson for the campaign. The 3R song with easy to understand and sing melody attracted many young followers. The artist becomes idol for many teenagers and they tried to follow what have been envisioned for, to recycle.

While disseminating civic messages is always the main task of Government, many have been carried out without considering the attractiveness and appearance to the target groups. Youngsters with their ideas and thinking is no more interested to listen patiently to the boring civic message. They like to see multimedia effect, to follow what their idols are doing and etc. Hence, effective social marketing is becoming important if one hopes to engage the mass.

Social marketing is effective if it is fulfilling the social need of the people and closely related to their needs and desires. For example, launching a campaign urging people to walk on the street instead of driving is heading to failure whereas the community is very much concerned about safety and crime prevention. Priority has to be set first, and right.

Secondly, to provide sufficient infrastructure in meeting the social needs. For example, urging people to recycle without providing sufficient infrastructure and incentive is tantamount of doing nothing and leading to failure.

Thirdly, social marketing must have a sustaining plan in which follow through actions and constant monitoring is critical in ensuring that the success of a campaign is not for a short period only. More than often, numbers of campaign with very good start ended up with failure due to sustainability issue.

Having said these, social marketing is critical at the beginning and gearing for a good start is important for project implementation. Therefore, engaging artist or popular figures as the programmes promoter or ambassador might be a good idea.

Social Sustainability

The term of social sustainability was brought up during a chit chat with friends last night. While having a cup of tea at a food court, we saw the behaviour of customers and some common characters. There are people paying full attention to what happen at their surrounding and even a petty thing cannot escape from their eye. There are people talking with loud voice without considering the disturbance to others. There are people walking around scouting for opportunities, either they are selling or trying to snatch. There are people sitting quietly at a corner and seem like losing themselves in this concrete jungle. There are people making an effort to catch attention from opposite gender. We are wondering how to melt these diverse cultural background and, perhaps individual agenda and priority together, if we are talking about social sustainability. In this respect, we are talking about sustaining the friendship. The argument is simple, if we cannot manage friendship with a small group of people, it is perhaps more difficult a task to manage a much more larger social fabric.

Friendship sustainability is achievable if both the parties are sharing the same vision and caring for each others as well as willing to scarify individual egoism for the betterment of the friendship. Having said this, the starting point must always be knowing each other well first. Sometime when starting a conversation, we tend to forget to introduce our strengths and weaknesses, or even ourselves first and most of the time it end up with more confusing rather than understanding.

So, perhaps next time and first thing to do in meeting a new friend is trying to introduce yourselves briefly, friendly and of course with enthusiasm.

Malaysia Day

Today is Malaysia Day, the day in 1963 when Sarawak and Sabah of East Malaysia merged with Malaya for a bigger country. While it is a day worth to recognise and celebrate, we in the Peninsular Malaysia tend to focus more on the National Day, the day Malaya claimed independent from the colonial. This is not helping in uniting both the East and West, at least to have everyone to share the Day. While National Day is declared a public holiday, the Malaysia Day is only a holiday for Sabah. I presume, Sabahan and Sarawakian will like to have us to celebrate the Day with them.

Until then, 1Malaysia is still a long way to achieve.

Bag Too Small For Washable Food Container

I chaired a review meeting for the SMART RANGER pilot project last Friday. The project involving 5 schools in PJ is to educate the students and teachers on recycling and sustainability. Many interesting programmes were implemented. These include the campaign for recycling, composting, planting, minimising the use of plastic bag. But, one of the campaign that generated some interest and debate is the Bringing Your Own Container Campaign. The campaign urge students to bring their own container for food. Instead of buying the food with plastic wrapping or even the polystyrene, the students will have them with their container. The Campaign is getting well progressively with the pupils at primary level. Similar campaign is thought to have not achieved the same result at the secondary level. A teacher was cautious about the dull looking container that might not welcome by the teenagers and also the size is too large for the school bag which is having extra size at the moment. Presently, students have too many reference books and stationary to carry with them and to ask them to bring extra item is definitely unwelcome.

All the while, we have only talked about promoting good environmental practices amongst the student, never realising that they are, too burdened with other things. The project has provided some good insight about practicality.

Free WIFI

I went to Kelana Mall, SS6 for my tea last Monday. I noticed that many cafe there offering the service of free WIFI. Undoubtedly, this is an emerging trend of commercial establishments providing free Internet service to their patrons. We saw shopping malls, coffee shops, food courts, government offices, hotels and even the health centres are doing the same. Some have even started providing the mobile phone battery charging facility for their customers. I believe this trend will further expand to other type of businesses and wider coverage of services, perhaps one day we can see all premises are equipped with free children play area. By doing so, branding is established and customers loyalty is assured. Nowadays, we over heard youngster said going to a XXX Town XXX Coffee for online chit chat.

In selecting my outlets for Internet service at Kelana Mall, I looked for premises offering the best service, ambiance, setting, variety of food and beverage. Only then, I noticed that while some establishments have considered providing free WIFI service an essential facility, some have done so simply because others are doing so without proper planning.

While there are outlets providing power point at every tables, there are outlets without any power point or only have few in a corner. Some outlets only have WIFI access in the open area or seating without cool air whilst few are offering choice at open and enclosed area. There are outlets requesting password for securing the line while some have unsecured service. Perhaps it is a controlling measure to allow access for own customers only. While there are reasons or justification for doing so, I believe under the digital age, customers prefer unlimited access or with limited controlling factors. Any move to restrict access or make accessibility difficult is certainly unwelcome, I presume.

Perhaps for businesses or even government agencies to look into providing Free Digital Services for public in winning their market share and competitive edge, these considerations should not be over looked or else the services will have no value added and remain as a PR jargon.

Cradle to Cradle

Cradle to graveyard is how people describe the roles of local government in dealing with the daily affairs of residents. It is said that from the date of birth, local government will look after one's affair until his last day in this World. It is true in the sense that we spend most of our time to live, study, play, work and leisure in a locality that is managed by the local government. While local government takes care of our living, it does not guarantee sustainable living, I mean personal livelihood in this era of green. Sustainable living is very much a personal life objective. An individual is the one to determine whether you are embracing sustainability or not. Of course, the commitment of other stakeholders will help in making sustainability works. We should aim for cradle to cradle.

The Cradle to Cradle : Remaking The Way We Make Things as promoted by William McDounogh talking about Zero Waste from the beginning until a product's end of pipe. It is no more reduction, but towards waste less from the time resource is used until the product is disposed of. That's mean to minimise the carbon footprint for all actions we have. The many concepts of design for environment, products life cycle analysis, environmental accounting and etc are tools to help us to realise this objective. So, next time when people talk about "Cradle", we should be happy to take note, I presume.

Gated Community

I bought a GPS navigator recently so that going around to new places is made easier. With navigator and latest map, I was able to find new places even for the area that I have not been there before. However, I was lost last week for going to a neighbourhood. I travelled using the direction as shown on the GPS screen and it was clear and precise. Nonetheless, approaching the neighbourhood, I was denied entry because of the closure of the exit by man made barricade. The exit was blocked and locked. I have to turn around to look for entrance that managed by the security personnel and it took me another half an hour to reach to my destination. Perhaps this is one of the disadvantages of advance technology due to the action of mankind. The blockage makes accuracy of GPS in doubt. Perhaps this is the good of gated community, to dis convenient the strangers to a neighbourhood. Perhaps this is also a self help initiative by the residents to combat crime from happening onto themselves or their living environment.

Under the current security and safety concern, gated community is useful at least to minimise the crime perception of people. The community guarded by security personnel is a form of administrative harassment to prevent or slow down crime from happening. It is a solution at least for the communities who can afford it. However, it does not mean that crime will be diminished, but to be shifted elsewhere. The crime busters will shift their attention to the unguarded area. At the end of the day, crime will still happen to the people who cannot afford to hire the security personnel.

By putting the gate for a particular area, we are actually practicing segregation of community, divert from the best practices of planning. For a sustainable community, we plan to integrate people from diverse background, the rich and poor, the young and old. But, the segregation has actually lessen the opportunities for people to interact and mingle around. It is definitely not helping for a 1Malaysia Society.

Perhaps we should look into bigger picture of preventing crime instead of focusing at the neighbourhood area. Crime might also link to social problem, poverty, economic opportunities, trans boundary migration, fairness, justice and etc. Perhaps we should not burning the forest for a tree.

Place Branding

When I read the article entitled "Strong Brands Make A Strong Nation" appeared on The Sun last Wednesday, it reminded me on what I have discussed with my fellow planner friend last Monday over his plan to move back to Malaysia. He has been working in oversea for a planning consultancy firm for the last 15 years. He mentioned about focusing on strategic and master planning as well as place making in Malaysia. We spoke about place making also known as city branding. We agreed that due to globalisation and competitiveness amongst cities for investment and human capital, for a city to go above from others, it needs to be recognised for its' special feature and identity. A city with good image and branding can attract more attention and thus, capital investment and in flow of talents. For instance, Paris as a fashion design city has attracted a lot of talented people. Image is not a jargon and can be created over night through political will. It is a character building by leveraging on existing advantages and values it has either naturally or built.

For example, New York City is known as Big Apple simply not because it has a lot of apple trees. City State of Singapore known for its cleanliness and greenery is a collective effort with years of nurturing. Melbourne as a liveable city is the efforts of getting all stakeholders to work together. Boston known as an educational hub is the gathering of many top universities and colleges. The list can go on and every city manager is searching for their best branding. At the end of the day, it is about economy.

In fact PJ has a lot of uniqueness and features to promote. I am happy to see the opening of Old Town White Coffee Cafe in the Section 1 of PJ, also known as Old Town as this might further promote the place, but sad to say that the so called Old Town is actually referring to the Old Town of Ipoh. We missed an opportunity to promote PJ. Perhaps it is time seriously for soul searching rather than a gimmick talk only. For doing so, greater engagement with stakeholders is important, I mean the original and long enough residents of PJ and not only confine ourselves to the newcomers.

House

The hottest discussion via wireless medium now is the showing of 15Malaysia films in conjunction with the 2009 National Day. It is not entirely because of the late Yasmin Ahmad who showed her true self above the racial line, but rather many new emerging young Malaysian telling the truth about Malaysia with true picture via their perspective and value. They are showing Malaysia through their understanding on human kind, universal value and the many good facet about our community. No such scenes about hate, disharmony, racial remarks, discrimination, injustice and etc. I thought the films are refreshing and should becoming our shared foundation and direction to move on, if we are so hoping to have 1Malaysia.

The movie on "House" is a reflection of how the marginalised have been displaced and sadly, some how did not get enough attention and sympathy from other members of the community. Even, our supposedly intellects do not understand why a kid does not envision of having a big house, but rather a small shelter. Under the name of development, economy and physical aspects have over shadow the need for social and spiritual development. We value the progress and development via GDP and visible material subjects. We might have forgotten that the ultimate aim of development is to make people's quality of life better and people are happy than before. Looking around, people are rushing to work place, small kids are rushing to catch school bus and attendting tuition classes, businesses are chassing the deals and many more. The question is along the chassing process, are we happy than before? If not, then why should we chase after the so call development but lost our happieness?

I think we only need a simple life, and a basic one if all of us can and willing to change our perception on life style. And I believe it is a trend now. For example, health concerned people is talking about organic food might be a good starting point for this to realise. To me, this is sustainable lifestyle.

I hope I can be part of the team.