Organising the Green Run event under the Masters of Rev Up 2014 initiative, a team from UCSI University learns the importance of teamwork IT was the opportunity to sharpen their organisational skills and the lure of new friendships that led to the eventual formation of UCSI CEC or UCSI University Community Engagement Centre team to participate in the Masters of Rev Up 2014 programme.
Comprising 15 people, the team is led by Alex Teoh Fur Shyong.
Their event is called Green Run, as the team is promoting green awareness to the public.
“These days, people are just so busy swiping their sophisticated gadgets, such as smartphones and tablets, that they’ve forgotten about caring for Mother Earth.
So with the current popularity of marathons among Malaysians, we decided to add the green element to our event.
We believe that increasing awareness among the public through their favourite activity is the best move to get more people to care for the environment,” says a spokesperson from the team.
Interestingly, the members of UCSI CEC come from different programmes, ranging from business administration to psychology; food science to actuarial science and computing.
Despite the diversity, they do have some things in common, namely, that all the team members have participated in other events before, and secondly, most of the committee members were involved in the UCSI University Community Engagement Centre (CEC), the organiser of the run.
That said, their biggest challenge did arise from the fact that the team members were from different backgrounds.
Shares the spokesperson: “It was tough to plan and stage our event because it was not easy to gather everybody together at the same time.
In addition, to have ideas accepted fully by everyone took effort.
In the end, through discussions and modification of ideas, we came to an agreement.” The team agrees that it learnt much from the Revive Isotonic Boot Camp, and were grateful for the useful guidance on the event.
“We received tips on how to organise an event from Revive, how to handle the media from PR agencies, learn from Marathon Shop specialists, and also got plenty of tips from event organiser, Avante.” The team members concur that their experience on the Masters of Rev Up initiative has taught them some important lessons.
“We learnt about the importance of teamwork and how with good teamwork, everything is smoother,” says the spokesperson.
“This run is a big event for us so we had to be careful with details.
Each team member helped the other from time to time to move the project forward.
We’ve also learnt the art of critical thinking, having undergone the event planning experience and sessions of brainstorming to effectively raise awareness.” On whether the Masters of Rev Up initiative has given them good preparation for their eventual working life, the team spokesperson replies: “We believe that teamwork is the foundation of working life.
In the real world, you have to work with people so it’s important to learn to cooperate with each other.
This initiative provided us with the platform to sharpen our skills at teamwork.”