Now What?

I started EducateDeviate three years ago because I was inspired by my recent Up with People trip and remembered that many of my friends and peers wanted to do the same but didn’t know how. It started with a musing about how the year will be – and has grown into a fledgling resource on [...]

How Blogging Has Impacted My Life (contest entry)

The people at Brazen Careerist, a Gen Y-oriented career and jobs website, are giving away a free ticket (worth US$425) to SXSW Interactive, one of the world’s biggest digital media conferences. To get a shot at the ticket, they’re asking people to write a post on how blogging has impacted their life. I’m a conference [...]

EducateDeviate on the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition

The Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition, hosted by Ashoka and Youth Venture, provides young people and youth organisations the chance to showcase their project online around the world. Projects will be evaluated and voted on, and the best projects go on to win a variety of prizes.
EducateDeviate is one of the projects listed for this [...]

Brightest Young Minds – Malaysia?

I just came back from 5 days of the Brightest Young Minds summit in Sydney. The general idea of the summit is to get motivated and passionate young people together to learn about creating initiatives, while also developing actual workable projects to be pitched to potential sponsors.

It started in South Africa and it’s now that [...]

An open letter to my ex-primary school

I wrote a longer, more detailed version of this letter on my personal journal mainly as a form of catharsis – letting go of my anger and sorrow. Many of my friends were personally touched by the letter and asked me to publish it publicly to make Malaysians aware of the very real effects of [...]

Once Upon A School: Get Inspired

As part of his TED Prize (the award given by major ideas conference TED to 3 prominent people to have one wish come true), author Dave Eggers talks about his project 826 Valencia, a writing and tutoring center for young people staffed by professional writers and educators, housed behind shops of very unusual nature – [...]

Take Back Your Education

I just finished reading The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins, where she chronicles the life of a few high school juniors and seniors in a top high school in the US (her former school) as they pile themselves up with activities and other things to keep themselves qualified for college. Like in Denise Clark Pope’s Doing [...]

Edublogger Tony Pua now Member of Parliament

Tony Pua, co-writer of top Malaysian education blog Education in Malaysia, won his seat in PJ Utara in Malaysia’s recent elections, and is now a Member of Parliament. He is one of a handful of Malaysian bloggers that are now officially involved in politics.
This will be interesting. I knew about Tony’s nomination, but I didn’t [...]

Malaysian can’t get Filipino stepson into school

From The Star:
I AM a Malaysian citizen who has taken a Filipino wife four years ago. Since then, I have also been raising her son from a previous liaison as my own. 
But my stepson, who is now seven-years-old, is unable to enrol in a government school to begin his Primary One education. The [...]

World Youth Congress 2008 – Need Help

I’ve been accepted as one of 600 delegates (out of 5000 applications) for the World Youth Congress 2008 in Quebec, Canada. Here’s my invitation letter (I edited out my address and passport number for privacy). I was selected in the Young Journalist category based on
To go to this congress, I need to get a [...]

More Youth Conferences

From the YouthLinkExpress newsletter, which is am absolutely fantastic resource for events and opportunities for youth development:
Civicus Youth Assembly
Date:June 16-18, 2008
Location:Glasgow, Scotland
Building on the success of last year’s CIVICUS Youth Assembly the 2008 event will offer an opportunity to meet and work with other young women and men who are really making changes to things [...]

Know a kick-ass indie designer/event manager/promoter?

(cross-posted to EducateDeviate, Wanna Be A KP, and Facebook)
I’ve got some plans to develop EducateDeviate further (to make it more self-sustainable) as well as to boost my chances at getting KaosPilots funding.
To do that, I need help with the following:

Web design and development – particularly those who can take my list of “I need [...]

YouthMalaysia’s National Youth Entrepreneurship Convention – Report Back

You can never be too overexposed!
- Kid Chan
The National Youth Entrepreneurship Convention was surprisingly well done. There was a large crowd and a good group of interesting and fun speakers. Mostly everyone was relaxed and jovial and were open to questions and light banter. Kid Chan had TONS of energy, Kenny Sia was very “boy [...]

Vote for an EducateDeviate Proposal on ChangeThis!

My manifesto proposal, How to Get Involved with your Passions (based on this entry) has been approved and is now up for voting on ChangeThis!
ChangeThis manifestos are often filled with useful knowledge and information on self development, business, worldchanging, culture, politics, and other issues. Some of the great ChangeThis manifestos are Change the Way You [...]

At GK3 – Youth Social Enterprise Initiative Forum

Hey everyone,
Just a quick note from the GK3 conference in Kuala Lumpur, where I’m volunteering as the PR/Media person for the Youth Social Enterprise Initiative Forum. I am having WAY too much fun with the BrainStore ideaFactor workshops. Can you imagine – a whole company just based on generating ideas!!! I want a job.
Further updates [...]