Media Prima is committed to making a tangible contribution to the societies in which it is active and aims to promote the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups. For many years now, the commitment has been expressed through our broadcast programme highlighting social issues, promoting education and helping vulnerable groups in society to be included in the economic and social dynamic of society.
Promoting Education
We believe education is fundamental to socioeconomic development, as we create, build and encourage educational programmes for students of all ages. Our programmes focus on sponsoring education; reading and literacy; business-education and other local needs. Some highlights of our education programmes are as follows:
PINTAR Project
The Promoting Intelligence, Nurturing Talents, Advocating Responsibility (PINTAR) project was launched on 17 December 2006 by Second Finance Minister; Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop. The programme was initiated by the Ministry of Finance and driven by Khazanah Nasional together with Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) with patronage from our Prime Minister, Y.A.B. Dato' Seri Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi. It is a demonstration of the GLCs contributions to society as outlined in the Silver Book (one of the 10 GLCs Transformation initiatives launched by the Putrajaya Committee on GLC High Performance). It is aimed at helping to raise awareness of the importance of education and improving the academic standards of underprivileged children and under-performing schools. This was our second year in adopting SMK Jelutong and SMK Hutchings located in Penang.
In 2007, we launched the Executive Workshop themed “Our School Our Life” in which 120 people comprising representatives from the schools’ communities participated. From the session, activities such as motivational talks for PMR and SPM students, examination workshops, academic excellence award, family day, study visits to Sri Pentas and student leadership camps were suggested in hopes of improving the five issues regarding the school improvement. The issues were improving the school academic issues, creating the school as a community based place, creating a sense of more than just a school, cultivating school pride and creating a conducive creative environment. All of the suggested activities were executed throughout the year with positive response from the students.
Studies have shown that parental involvement works, regardless of demographics, financial status or race when it comes to making a difference in a child’s academic and personal performance growth. Noting this, we engaged Dr. Zasmani Shafiee who was in the National Team for Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome in Maudsley Hospital. Given her experience working with adults and adolescents with learning disability and autism, we organised a Family Day with Dr. Zasmani in an effort to get parents more involved in the students’ education activities. During the talk, she touched on topics such as time management, planned family activities and family involvement; reminding them of their impact on the child and that schooling improves when they have engaged and involved parents. This resulted in improved student achievement, reduced absenteeism, better behaviour and higher confidence amongst the children.
Recognising the prevailing needs of the special needs students and parents, Dr. Zasmani is currently aiding students at SMK Jelutong as part of her personal community effort. It pleases us to know that our efforts have had a spill-over effect into the community to assist the school. We hope that our future activities will have the same impact - encouraging others in the community at large to start volunteering their time and efforts as well.
Through our involvement in PINTAR, we are pleased to see the programme’s effectiveness in increasing the school’s performance. Figure 1 compares the number of students who passed Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR) in 2007 to 2008.
SMK Jelutong‘s Penilaian Menengah Rendah 2008 results has improved by 11.6 percent despite the increase in the student population. The passing percentage increased by 13.4 percent in English, Mathematics and Science. Figure 2, below refers to number of students who achieved As in PMR since the beginning of the programme.
In 2008, SMK Jelutong was given the recognition as the best secondary school for students with special needs. The number of special needs students in the school has increased from 59 in 2007 to 69 in 2008. SMK Jelutong has been nominated to be a cluster school focusing on Pendidikan Khas Bermasalah Pembelajaran (PKBP) as a niche area of the school. We were especially proud when Muhammad Hafizuddin bin Jamal from SMK Jelutong who, despite his autism, achieved 6As for PMR. He consistently attended our programmes and we believe his achievement gives credence that our various programmes have had a positive impact on students.
In Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM), SMK Jelutong’s passing percentage increased by 22.15 percent despite the increase of students that sat for SPM. For Bahasa Malaysia, Moral Studies, Science, Principles of Accounts and Biology, passing percentage increased by 9.8 percent and the number of students who passed their Bahasa Malaysia oral test increased by 5.63 percent. Figure 3 illustrates the number of students who passed five SPM main subjects for the year 2006 and 2007 has increased by eight students.
The PMR results for SMK Hutchings showed an average increase of 18 percent for Bahasa Malaysia, History, Mathematics and Chinese. Although there were not many activities organised with SMK Hutchings, we intend to see more activities planned for 2009.
It was encouraging to see great achievements in the academic results of the schools that we have adopted under the PINTAR Project. We are looking forward to continuing the programme and hope to have a more hands-on approach, especially with SMK Hutchings in future activities. We hope that by participating in the PINTAR Project, we will be able to pave the way in playing our role in developing and steering our younger generations toward the right direction.
8TV Scholarship Fund
The 8TV scholarship fund was established in 2006 to provide education opportunities to deserving students in the country. Successful students received scholarships that covered their tuition fees for their undergraduate degree, diploma and foundation levels in various disciplines. The scholarship programme, in collaboration with SEGi College saw an increase in scholarship funds of up to RM1,000,000.
NSTP RHB Spell-It-Right (SIR) Challenge
The objective of the SIR programme was to cultivate and encourage reading habits among the young as we believe that vocabulary knowledge comes from reading. For this, we received the kind support of RHB Bank Berhad, Longman, various universities and shopping malls. The programme was launched on 15 April 2008 by the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Y.A.B. Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak. The challenge was televised through TV3 to raise the interest and awareness amongst our younger viewers to learn and love the language.
The challenge was open to teams from various schools and divided into primary and secondary school categories. We received an overwhelming response - more than 1,959 participants from 207 primary and 283 secondary schools. We are proud to report that we received such positive response from the public, parents, teachers and students that we extended the challenge to lower primary school students from age seven to nine. We are proud that we have successfully instilled a desire to master the English language and boost students’ confidence level.
NSTP School Sponsorship Programme
NST launched a school sponsorship programme whereby schools within our distribution areas were provided with the New Straits Times newspaper. This project was made possible with the help of individuals and corporations that sponsored discounted newspapers to schools all around Malaysia.
We accomplished this by providing 4 million copies of newspapers to 2,058 rural and semi-urban schools. We also organised Newspaper-in Education (NiE) workshops to 4,000 teachers and students to encourage teachers to use newspapers as a teaching tool in the classroom. Progress on the efforts and the feedback from teachers and students were then reported annually to the sponsors. The programme’s objective is to improve the students’ English comprehension while highlighting the role of newspapers as a useful educational resource.
NST Book Donation Campaign
Sometimes, helping others does not necessarily mean donating money, and that is why we launched the NST Book Donation Campaign. The purpose of it was to promote reading of English materials among children. The public was invited to donate any English reading materials in exchange for free entries to attend NST’s-NiE Educational Session. The donated books were then given to two orphanages; Rumah Amal Desa Nyireh in Semenyih and Rumah Nur Salam at Chow Kit.
Four NST-NIE sessions were held in Subang Jaya where parents donated a minimum of three books. The campaign mostly focused on residents of Subang Jaya via NST’s pullout “Street”. We collected 420 books over the two-month campaign. The campaign served in promoting educational values for children and served as a relevant and good extension of NST’s brand value which is to promote usage of English language among our youth.
Public Seminar on Business Fraud
We were delighted to join HELP University in their effort to promote greater awareness on the need to understand issues concerning business fraud. NST, Berita Harian and Harian Metro were the official newspapers for HELP University College’s International Seminar on Business Fraud in September 2008. Our involvement reflected our role to promote good business etiquette among Malaysian public via our publications. We are glad to be able to help a local academic institution establish a new and much needed discourse in Malaysia. Going further, we held a public seminar with small business owners in Bangsar about business fraud to create better understanding of fraud issues that are prevalent today.
Global Brand Forum Malaysia 2008 (GBF)
The forum focused on bringing global best practices to energize, transform and raise brand consciousness of local marketeers and brand owners as well as prepare brands to be globally competitive. The forum was a once in a lifetime opportunity to interact with, listen to and get practical brand ideas directly from the world’s most influential brand gurus and practitioners who have created and advised the world’s most powerful brands such as Oliver Stone (Oscar Award - Winning Hollywood Director), Jim Stengel (former Global Marketing Officer of Proctor & Gamble), Stewart Butterfield (Founder of Flickr.com) and Martin Lindstrom (Youth Marketing Futurist).
This forum was a platform that provided a powerful networking opportunity, allowed one to pick the best business practices and helped to inspire a person to reflect and ultimately engineer change in the way brands and businesses are viewed. Recognizing this, we gave out 200 complimentary tickets to undergraduate and graduate students to attend the forum held at the Palace of the Golden Horses in December 2008. This enabled the students to have the chance to learn from the masters, absorbing practical applications through workshops provided, to network with industry market leaders and influencers from across various countries.
OUR ROLE IN SOCIETY
In our view, CR means more than just broadcasting programmes to our audience and being a responsible organisation. Media Prima’s commitment to society is expressed among other ways, through our fundraising efforts, volunteering time with orphanages and our sponsorship activities. Below are the highlights:
In the spirit of volunteerism
Our existence intertwines with the community that surrounds us and we relish the thought that we could play a role in the community. Although there are a lot of us here in Media Prima, we all work towards the same common goal. ntv7 embarked on a series of initiatives; the Doraemon Outing Day to visit the cancer patients under palliative care at University Malaya Medical Centre, breaking fast with the orphans of Rumah Penyayang in Klang, educational visit to Zoo Negara with orphans from Rumah Hope, Rumah Raudah, Anbu Illam and Rumah Kids.
Fundraising for worthy causes
We realised that not all members of the community are as equally fortunate. The unfortunate ones are not only here in our country but stretched across the world. We are a global citizen company and that is why our humanitarian efforts begin at home and end up at all corners of the world. Below are descriptions of our fundraising efforts and their beneficiaries:
Tabung TV3, Bersamamu
Well in its twelfth season and already a household name, Bersamamu managed to raise a total of RM400,750 during the year under review. Throughout the year, contributions from Bersamamu have been distributed to Pertubuhan Pesakit Parah Malaysia, Sungai Buloh Community Centre, Taman Mini Malaysia & Mini ASEAN, UCOM Placement Centre and countless individuals all around the country. The fund is managed by an independent body, Amanah Raya Berhad (ARB) as its trustee and all pay-outs made are based on the review and approvals by ARB.
Tabung Dapur Untuk Darfur, TV3
As mentioned, our humanitarian efforts have a global outreach. Seeing the atrocities in Darfur, we launched Tabung Dapur Untuk Darfur TV3. Patronised by our Deputy Prime Minister, Y.A.B. Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak, the fund managed to raise an astounding RM855,473.99.
To-date, we have contributed a water pumping system and 15 generator sets, donated 26 cows for the Ibadah Korban Darfur. The funds were also utilised to construct four handicrafts workshops as well as purchased raw materials such as leather and generators for the workshops as part of our intention to promote a sustainable economy for the Darfur refugees.
Our trips to Darfur also included members of Dewan Pemuda Masjid Malaysia and volunteers from Malaysia medical students who are currently studying in Egypt. The objective of the trip was to set up medical tents, provide clean water source and distribution for food. We are grateful for the help provided by the Prime Minister’s Office of Malaysia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, State Government of South Darfur, Sudan and to all people who have worked together to make the effort successful.
The General Tabung TV3
The General Tabung TV3 was created in 2002 initially for the purpose of aiding those in need. Over the years it has evolved to support a wide range of causes. In 2008, it contributed towards the Tunku Azizah Fertility Foundation, Malam Jalinan Kasih, S.K. Sentosa Jaya, Asrama Baitul Ummah and Fakir Miskin Semporna Sabah.
UNHCR-Hands of Hope
A survey finding by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in January 2008 revealed that an astounding 39,000 persons of concern were registered with UNHCR in Malaysia-12,800 from the Northern Rakhine State of Myanmar, 19,200 ethnic minorities from Myanmar while the remaining were those from other countries. Out of the amount, 11,400 were women and 9,200 were children below the age of 18.
In view of this, our television networks provided airtime support for UNHCR to promote the Hands of Hope public awareness campaign on refugees. This first of its kind awareness campaign on refugees in Malaysia, made through a collaboration between UNHCR and a creative agency in Kuala Lumpur, consisted of thought provoking and a highly creative set of media materials. It began with a small group of concerned individuals who volunteered their time and harnessed their creativity to give a voice to the voiceless – the refugees, all with the objective to humanise and to clear prevailing misconceptions pertaining to the refugee issue, the most common being the inability to distinguish between a refugee and a migrant.
The campaign material aired across our television networks was also aimed at providing the refugees with a platform to collectively share their grievances on what compelled them to make a decision to seek refuge outside their homeland and the difficulties faced upon stepping foot in foreign lands.
Given the vast capacity of audience reach through our television networks, we hope to have been able to mitigate the plight of the refugees while, at the same time, eliminate social stigmas that were likely to arise with regards to refugee issue. To further strengthen our support for the Hands of Hope campaign, we have also extended an invitation to a representative from UNHCR to appear on one of our talk shows to not only enhance the public’s knowledge on the issue but to also act as a call-to-attention for individuals and organisations interested in this humanitarian cause.
Road Safety Campaign
Big Tree partnered with PLUS, Elite and Linkedua in a Merdeka-cum-Road Safety Campaign by providing overhead bridges and billboard space during the balik kampung festive rush period. It is part of our conscious effort to remind people to drive safely. Our online portals through Alt Media joined this effort by providing tips for a safe drive home to loved ones.
Sponsorship of various causes
We are committed to give our support to issues that will yield the greatest benefit to the communities that we serve; including healthy living, education, climate change and safety.
8TV is actively involved in supporting community service messages like the Breast Cancer Awareness, AIDS Awareness and collaborated with UNICEF to promote World Children’s Day.
Big Tree also contributed funds to various charitable causes such as, Saving Lives in Africa by The One Foundation, Breast Cancer Awareness Charity Gala Dinner 2008 by Breast Cancer Welfare Association and the YTL Climate Change programme. Next year, we hope to develop a more systematic way to monitor our contributions and how it has affected the community around us. With optimistic spirit, we hope we will be able to do a better job in raising awareness and educating our public.
Fostering corporate stewardship
As a leading company in Malaysia, we know that we have to lead the way. We also realised our efforts are more effective if it received support from others. Throughout the year, our activities have involved both the government and private sectors.
NSTP Charity Fund
As part of its fund-raising initiative to channel financial aid to young children with congenital heart diseases, NSTP organised two sports events during the year:
NSTP-Tropicana Charity Golf Tournament
In June 2008, NSTP organised the NSTP–Tropicana Charity Golf Tournament which raised RM100,000 for the NSTP Charity Fund.
CEO & Celebrity Charity Tennis 2008
Given the success of the NSTP-Tropicana Charity Golf Tournament, Lawn Tennis Association of Malaysia and NSTP organised the CEO & Celebrity Charity Tennis 2008 in conjunction with ECM Libra Junior Tennis Championship in December 2008. The participants consisted of 44 players, which included CEOs, celebrities and ambassadors. The donation surpassed its original target of RM32,000 to reach RM75,000.
Recognising Good Samaritans
Introduced in 2004, NSTP-PwC Malaysian Humanitarian Award is an award that seeks to bring national attention and recognition of Malaysians for their outstanding public service and those who went beyond the normal call of duty to perform selfless deeds of a humanitarian nature. It also acted as an impetus to further motivate its nominees and for others to emulate their efforts. As a partner in this initiative, we are heartened by these outstanding citizens nominated to the award humanitarian deeds.
