The Port Klang chapter of the Hindu Youth organisation (HYO) held the HYO Annual Award Presentation Ceremony 2010 on May 9 this year. The event was held at Dewan Hamzah Klang and supported by the Vijayaratnam Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the QI Group in Malaysia. The award ceremony was officiated by Vijay Eswaran.
The HYO Port Klang has been working for the betterment of the Indian Community for the last 27 years. Its main aim is to nurture and develop Indian youth to become individuals with good character, sound knowledge and leadership qualities.
The Annual Award Presentation Ceremony recognises and felicitates the hard work of the students in appreciation of their achievements. Some of the awards given out include recognition for Exemplary Student, High Achievers and Outstanding Student. This aim of the event is to help students in the community to maintain a healthy competition and promote a culture of excellence.
Vijay Eswaran, who presided over the award ceremony, has been closely associated with the HYO for many years as his father S.Vijayaratnam is the founder of the organisation, which recently celebrated its 60th anniversary.
Empowerment of youth, especially those from the Indian community is a cause close to Vijay’s heart. In his keynote speech at the event, he spoke about how one can achieve anything if we believe in ourselves and have faith in the Almighty. He illustrated this point through a thoughtful story that had the audience enraptured. He pointed out that we must always have faith in our actions and must never give up in the face of obstacles. Consistency in doing things, he said is an important quality. He added that we must continue to support and recognise young people’s achievements for them to develop faith in themselves and to encourage them to be better in not just academics, but in all aspects of life.
Vijay explained that all forms of progress and success begins with change. He proceeded to summarise the five main stages of change – The desire from within to change, understanding/ researching the areas of change, embarking on attempts to make the change, practicing the change, and finally attainment of happiness due to the change.
The students were grateful to Vijay for his advise and words of wisdom as he connected with them by speaking to them in a mixture of Tamil and English which helped them understand his message better.
