AYA Awards

It all happened somewhere in mid August… It was a very busy week and it was both physically and emotionally wrecking for me due to personal issues, work, and ministry - everything all lumped up together. But when I received a phone call informing me that someone nominated Contact Sports for the AYA Dream Malaysia Awards, it truly brightened up my week. I was dumb founded! A lot of questions ran through my mind, “Who nominated us? What is this award all about? How did we get there? What have we done to deserve such a nomination?” I was really excited! It was like - WOW! HURRAY! I just couldn’t sit still. I needed to tell someone, I needed to let it out, I needed to….I needed to….especially tell my boss!! We were nominated for “Youth Friendly Company of the Year 2007!”

Checking out their website you will discover that Asian Youth Ambassador (AYA) is a non-profit organization that exists to inspire young people to dare to dream and working towards realizing their dreams for the benefit of all. The AYA Dream Malaysia Awards is about our future - and the people who are farsighted enough to invest in it. Started in year 2005, the Awards is in line with AYA’s objective of building tomorrow’s leaders today and to create a better and brighter future for Malaysia by inspiring, inciting and inculcating responsible attitudes and actions especially – but not exclusively – in the hearts and minds of our youths. This Award serves as an encouragement to emerging individuals and responsible institutions to persevere in their dreams of improving the quality of life for themselves and for those around them in spite of the difficulties and obstacles they encounter.

What I found most interesting is that the person who nominated us expressed that, “This company (Contact Sports) exists not for personal gain but rather, its vision is to build the youth of tomorrow physically, socially and mentally, and to see them rise up for the betterment of our future!”

Wow….this is so uplifting to the spirit! Sometimes I wonder if we’ve made any impact at all to those whom we have come into contact the past 3-4 years, but this has been very encouraging. Thank you so much Mr. Shaun. Thanks for believing in us! Thanks for the nomination!

The week after the phone call, AYA staffs were in Penang doing an interview with us. It was a great yet nerve wrecking experience to be in front of a camera. It was great also to get to know the people who are so passionate about AYA and what they do. Syabas to them!

Not long after that, we were told that from the list of all that were nominated, we had been short-listed for the awards. Well, there is only one more thing to do… go to the website and VOTE FOR US!