Global Leadership Program USM 2008 July

Global leadership program (GLP) is a new program introduced by University Sains Malaysia (USM). This program is established to create and develop leadership skill at a global level. Students selected for this program were among society and club leaders and also students who were active in university programs. The purpose of this program is to give students the opportunity to expose themselves at the international level. Exposure will come from many aspects such as culture, social lifestyle, interaction with the people and their traditions, technologies and history. This exposure and gain of knowledge will eventually improve the thinking capabilities of these students and making them more mature leaders of tomorrow. In this program, 9 students were selected and they represented all races in Malaysia including the native group and one international student from Thailand.
This first group of students under the GLP was sent to Bosnia and Herzegovinian to attend an international conference ‘how does youth understand and practice human right’ from July 19 -27 2008. This conference was organized by the student parliament of University of Sarajevo in co-operation with University of Sarajevo. Over 10 countries participated in that conference.
We the USM student made a presentation on Malaysians’ human rights perspective. Although there were 2 delegates from Malaysia, only USM presented. There were many issues that our foreign friends were interested in especially on how Malaysian could maintain harmony in a multicultural society. We guessed that this was of particular interest to the Bosnians because of the war that they had which was a war among races. Another aspect of our society that they had interest in was how mix marriages happen among different races and how non-Muslims have to convert to Islam upon marriage. We had an interesting time explaining all this to them as all of it was new to them.
The most important aspect of our trip there as students of USM was bringing USM to the world. There were many positive feedbacks from the participants. They were really impressed with USM’s APEX status achievement. Introducing USM as a place where one studies in a garden and having campaigns like the White Coffin campaign really captivated all the students. As icing on the cake, we distributed souvenirs to the participants and to the organizers of the conference as a sign of appreciation for inviting us. At the end of the conference we had many enquires on post graduate studies. Students from Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Croatia are now all interested to experience our studying environment first hand.
In the end, when we returned we were all changed students, with a more mature mentality and a broader mind. All this changes is what is going to make us, students of USM, different from all the other universities in the country. We would like to thank the university for this amazing opportunity. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank HEPP and the International Office who helped us prepare and face this never to be forgotten trip.