Humanity Night promotes education for all

By Nabilah ‘Athirah 

GOMBAK, 28 November 2018: Humanity Night Concert ’18 held last Sunday (25 November) at Main Hall, IIUM Cultural Centre (ICC) on the theme of ‘Education for All’, marked the closing of a week-long IIUM i-Fiesta.

In conveying the message of educational opportunity for all, the event collaborated with Projek Iqra’ with the objective to create awareness of opportunities for the underprivileged children for basic and comprehensive education.

President of Projek Iqra’ Malaysia, Muhammad Solleh bin Mahfoz, said that this collaboration acted as a link between the NGO and the university so that the students are aware of the movement where they can directly participate and contribute to the project as well.

“This kind of exposure is increasing due to the existing media and it allows the project’s exponential which supported the improvement of this movement. Specifically, it benefited both parties with the impactful participation from university students. It also helped to pull out the underprivileged children from poverty,” he said.

The event was a fusion of education and entertainment where well-known speakers namely Siti Awe, Nazriq Ahmad, Anwar Hadi and Takahara Suiko and celebrities like Naim Daniel, Ismail Izzani and Sufian Suhaimi took their turn on the stage to give a talk and to perform.

The event started with a talk by a social media influencer and also a practicing doctor, Siti Hawa on the topic of education through social media. She shared her experience in educating her followers who were mostly related to her field in medics.

She said: “When we share our knowledge through social media, we are actually doing a relax sharing session where there will be other users who participate in the discussion. There are also some of them who will add more information related to the topic.”

“On the other hand, people are becoming less interested in doing their own research on a certain topic. They gained information through people sharing in the social media without standing on their own thinking.”

Siti Hawa ended her speech with an advice to the audience to be careful in sharing any information “where we ought to state the relevant sources of information and knowledge”.

The second speaker, Nazriq Ahmad who was a former lecturer of CFS IIUM, spoke on the usage of technology in education.

He said, “Education has changed due to technology. It opens up a limitless portal to knowledge all around the world. We only need internet connection to connect with people from other parts of the world.”

Nazriq referred to the technology as a rose which is regarded as lovely and beautiful. However, he reminded the audience that roses have thorns.

He added: ”As a community, we have to protect the information in technology where it is prone to be abused. The power is in its accessibility to everyone in the world. As a vicegerent on this earth, it is part of our responsibility to safeguard the flow of information in today’s advanced technology.”

This was later followed with a talk by the famous couple in social media, Anwar Hadi and his wife, Takahara Suiko, on the topic of educating millennials. Being millennials themselves, they shared their journey in educating themselves through social media.

“The most effective learning for ourselves happened when we set our own educational goal,” they said.

“I used video (YouTube) to practise speaking in English, initially. I got better and improved my speaking. Later, I received a wider audience which brings about positive and constructive comments,” Anwar Hadi said.

When interviewed, Anwar and Takahara shared the same opinion. They mentioned: “The failure of technology is what needs to be discussed further. The noise in the social media is overpowering the learning process.”

The programme received wide attention and participation from the audience which included invited speakers and celebrities.***

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