YSEALI Kuala Lumpur: ASEAN Youth Interfaith Community

During the Young South-East Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) in Kuala Lumpur, I was put into civic engagement team, named Team Magnet. Choosing the name, we believe that our job as youth is to invite more youth and people to get engaged into a more serious and honest conversation.

Guk Sueb with Team Magnet and mentors
during the YSEALI in Kuala Lumpur

We were engaged into a serious discussion of establishing such interfaith community across the South-East Asian region by involving some countries to participate in this community. The idea was very simple but this is very fundamental.

We have been overshadowed with religion conflicts in Middle East, Africa, and South Asia; the fact is one of the longest conflicts related to religions have been happening in South-East Asian region, in Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand, Myanmar, and even some parts of Indonesia. Yes, we are working on civic engagement of #YSEALI in religious diversity in South-East Asian region.

The existence of the religion conflicts might be due to some factors, namely politic: some political leaders who use religion to trigger hatred for power, making the people are triggered to confront each other instead of searching the common values and grounds. Education: the lack of education and understanding towards the religious values and diversity might the people are easily influenced and provoked. Media: the media are to tend to overwhelm the society with animosity and the religious conflicts and hatred instead of providing the solution. Other causes like economic disparity, sources, law enforcement, and others.

We are working to promote religious tolerance through ASEAN interfaith community across ASEAN region by involving the youth as the main actors for this campaign. There are some tools we are about to utilize like posters, stickers, banners, pictures and posters bookmark. I believe it is really cheap and very close to the public. Another cheap but effective media is social media e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blog, these are where our youth now are hanging out daily anytime anywhere.

On-site visits to school, universities, house of praying, and other religious communities are considered very effective to meet directly with the key actors of this community. Another unique medium is food for peace, having food together on one table in such religious holy days or events. These would be conducted on-site and be shared to the wider audiences in other countries through social media.

Who are the key actors, we expect during the first three months ahead, we can gain recognition from the people especially the youth. How do we gain that? We’d like to optimize from the alumni associations across the countries. It is believed that there are hundreds of alumni who are actively engaged in their alumni associations. Similar local communities like religious communities would be very effective to be invited to share their perspectives. Students’ government and school principals, and media like local radio are great communities who would help this project.

There would be of course further program for this project. We really encourage you to get involved in this project by visiting our Facebook Page.