Digi announces Heidy and Adley winners of Telenor Youth Forum 2015

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October 29, 2015
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https://digi.com.my/media/articleURLhereWhichCanbeReallyLong

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate publication


Digi announces Heidy and Adley winners of Telenor Youth Forum 2015

Heidy Quah and Adley Chan to represent Malaysia at the thought leadership Forum on #KnowledgeForAll, held in conjunction with the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize event in Norway

SHAH ALAM, 30 October 2015 - Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd (Digi) today announced Heidy Quah and Adley Chan as local winners of the Telenor Youth Forum (#TYF15) competition, which called for youths passionate about increasing access to knowledge through digital and mobile technology to participate in a global dialogue on this topic.

As local winners, Heidy and Adley will represent Malaysia at the Forum in Oslo, Norway from 8 to 11 December this year. The annual event, which coincides with the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony week, will this year centre around the theme of #KnowledgeForAll. These two are among the 25 delegates, 14 women and 11 men aged 18-28, who are born into a digital age that encourages and enables untraditional and innovative solutions to societal challenges.

"Our delegates bring unique ideas and thoughts based on multiple perspectives and that are rooted in a range of societal challenges. Most importantly, they see opportunities where others see barriers to making an impact. We want to engage with them to discuss and explore how Telenor and mobile technology can be part of driving inclusive change and improving access to knowledge," says Sigve Brekke, President & CEO of Telenor Group.

21-year-old student and founder of Refuge for the Refugees, Heidy Quah is passionate about providing education for refugee children and is working to create a self-sustaining community-based education programme to empower these underprivileged communities. "I have seen kids who could barely read, write or speak English now teach at other refugee schools, using the internet as a learning aid. With improved language and computing skills, these kids also run their own little businesses to support their families and pay for their education. If every child imparts what they learn to others around them and so on, it becomes a sustainable community development opportunity. I hope to collaborate with like-minded individuals at the Forum on ways to expand this programme to help give the less privileged equal opportunities to education in a sustainable manner."

Adley Chan, 20, a commerce student, sees significant opportunity in connecting children from rural and urban areas to enable cross-border sharing of knowledge and learning materials with the end goal of creating an inclusive peer learning community. "While the world is struggling to recruit new teachers, it is probably also useful to ask: How do you teach children in places where there are no teachers? Through the Forum, I hope to obtain better, more refined perspectives on the issue of education accessibility and build strong collaborations to take steps towards making a change to the current education landscape and bridging this gap."

Read more about the 25 delegates here. An international selection panel consisting of representatives from civil society, academia and Telenor top management selected the final delegates from close to 2,000 applicants in 13 countries.

Universal access to education is in our grasp
Telenor has invited a range of high-level and inspiring speakers for the Forum programme, who all share a passion for knowledge and increasing access to learning. A keynote address will be given by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopaedia.

Other speakers include:

  • Justin Ferrell, award-winning journalist & design-thinker, Stanford University's d.school
  • Torbjørn Røe-Isaksen, Norwegian Minister for Education and Research
  • Santeri Koivisto from edugaming innovation MinecraftEdu
  • Laila Bokhari, Norwegian State Secretary & owner of an all-girls' school in Sultanabad, Pakistan
  • Tim Aye-Hardy, founder of Myanmar mobile education project, myME
  • Zihad Zaman, Jaago Foundation, which runs online schools with Grameenphone, Telenor Group's company in Bangladesh
  • Kelly Steen from Canadian storytelling start-up Wattpad
  • Julia Firestone, Global Business Coalition for Education's Global Education Platform
  • Stefan Velja, young innovator from Serbia & gold medal winner at Brussels Innova 2014


Empowering a generation of digital natives
Telenor Youth Forum is a global platform where young opinion leaders from Asia and Europe meet to build bridges across borders through innovative ideas, solidarity and exchange of knowledge and thoughts.

"It's a goal of ours to encourage young people to raise their voice for issues that matter, such as access to education and knowledge for all. The Nobel Peace Center is happy to once again partner with the Telenor Youth Forum because it gives a global stage to some of the most creative, passionate and optimistic of these voices. They have the chance to be a global fraternity of gifted young people with ideas and a drive to keep us all moving forward - towards peace and knowledge for all," says Executive Director Bente Erichsen of the Nobel Peace Center.

Read more about #TY15 at www.telenor.com/youthforum or join the conversation at www.facebook.com/TelenorYouthForum.