The 14th Tun Razak Youth Leadership Awards (TRYLA) Programme
12 - 19 May 2006

The 14th Tun Razak Youth Leadership Award (TRYLA) programme was successfully held this year at the Malaysian Prison College (Maktab Penjara Kajang), with a teambuilding and survival training exercise held at Nur Lembah Pangsun. TRYLA is a programme aimed at inculcating leadership values and encourage young people to speak up and pursue lasting solutions to problems.

The programme also attempts to instill unity among the participants for a common purpose of equality, fairness, and respect when they relate to social justice, patriotism, discipline, integrity, religious tolerance and good governance. A total of 43 participants who came from almost every state in Malaysia came to experience the taste of how it would feel like to be called a leader. TRYLA 2006, conducted from May 12 - 19 2006 was indeed a valuable experience for most participants.

Speaker session at Maktab Penjara Kajang Malaysia (MPM).

Among the activities in the programme were sessions by invited speakers, teambuilding games, strategy games and also community work. During the participants' stay at Nur Lembah Pangsun Resort, they were brought for night walk and river rafting, which most participants found interesting.

Renovating a villager's residence - part of Community Project at Kampung Orang Asli Paya Lebar, Sg Lui. Strategic Pointball Challenge at Bukit Jalil.

Besides the teambuilding activities, throughout the whole TRYLA programme, participants were involved with project planning such as planning for a community project which took place at the Kampung Orang Asli Paya Lebar, Sg. Lui. The community project involved participants helping the villagers mend houses, provide men power to help clean and refurbish the `kampung' for 27 families. Despite the tight schedule, all 43 participants managed to adjust and at the same time enjoyed the learning. For some of the participants, it was their first time being placed in a situation of having to work together with people with different personalities and who come from various economic and ethnic backgrounds. It was hard for some of them to cope with the marching drills that were carried out every morning at as early as 6am. Nevertheless they persevered till the end of the programme. Some participants faced difficulties, as they could not understand the national language that was used by the platoon leaders as commands during marching drills. There were participants who also had water phobia but none were left out of the activities that were planned such as the river rafting and also the jungle walk-treasure hunt that involved swimming.

Group photo of TRYLANS 2006 with speaker Dato' Nazir Razak and Justin Leong.

Above all these indifferences, the participants were determined to perform their best and to cope with each other even if it was learning a new language during those eight days. TRYLA 2006 was an event worth keeping in mind for a lifetime - all participants, facilitators and volunteers went home with different sets of experiences, each bringing a new goal or perspective to be motivated to excel in their respective profession.