That was our office.

The entrance of our office circa 2006. Joel, our cofounder, at the corner of that tiny room.

There were very few of us, mostly fresh out of college. We were young and excited people who squeezed and huddled in a tiny workspace to drive our dreams toward reality.

Then our little team grew, and that very tiny little room was not enough to contain us.

We packed our bags, put our things into boxes, and carried ourselves to a brand new space in Kelana Square.

It was a pretty cool place.

Our boys hard at work. Yep, it took 3 full grown gentlemen to put up a pair of windowblinds.

We were all settled in, and we loved that cozy, medium-sized space. We threw loads of colors in, and it was like home to us.

But we expanded faster than we thought – and pretty soon, that space, too, was not enough to keep us in.

So we pulled out our cardboard boxes, and were on the move again.

The packing process can be tedious, yet fun. For more photos, head over to our Facebook album.

As believers of a positive, homey culture, we decided to choose a place where everyone would wake up everyday and look forward to coming to work. Soon before we knew it, we found ourselves a brand new space in Bukit Gasing – which our entire team has fallen completely in love with.

This is where we are at now. Welcome to The Top.

We turned an idyllic, dreamy white bungalow into our workspace.

The view inside.

One of the many little gardens within the space

One of the split level floors, which we use as collaboration space.

The view from above

The swimming pool, where we throw occasional parties

The amazing sun deck furnished with colourful bean bags, disco balls and starlights.

As we settled in on our first day on September 8th (8/9/10), our entire team sat down and reminisced on how far we’ve come.

It has been an incredible journey, and we look forward to many, many more adventures to come.

To all our clients, partners and friends, do drop by and say hi. We’d love to have you visit us. :)

You can find us at:

Youth Asia @ The Top
No. 13, Lorong 5/4B
Bukit Gasing, 46000
Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Or, find us on Google Maps: http://goo.gl/maps/t2gv

We look forward to having you around :)

You read about The Festival in the papers and magazines.

You heard the shoutouts on radio.

You saw our students run up and down their campuses, persuading their peers to join them in the hundreds of exciting activities held at the Festival.

And most of all, you were an integral part of our online promotional campaign for YOUTH’10.

The 3-month public relations campaign for YOUTH’10 Malaysia’s Largest Youth Festival raked in RM6.7 million in media value this year, and was awarded the Malaysia Public Relations Awards 2010 under the category Promotional Activity of the year.

Big, big, BIG THANKS to our awesome communications partner Weber Shandwick for working with us throughout the 3 months. Also, a very very big thank you to our media partners for your ongoing support! The success would not have been made possible without you :)

• Fly FM (Official Radio Station)
• Hot FM (Official Radio Station)
• One FM (Official Radio Station)
• Gua.com.my (Official Portal)
• R.AGE by the Star (Official Youth Media)
• Malaysian Today (Official Youth Publication)
• 8TV
• TV3
• TV9
• Bernama TV
• Malay Mail
• Malaysian Reserve
• New Straits Times
• Berita Harian
• Harian Metro
• Utusan Malaysia
• Kosmo!
• Sin Chew Jit Poh
• Y! Mag
• Cleo
• Cosmopolitan
• ANIMAX

The Malaysia Public Relations Awards 2010 ceremony was held on 3 November 2010 at the Shangri-La Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. The MPRA is an annual event by the Public Relations Consultants’ Association (PRCA) Malaysia to recognise the achievements of public relations professionals and the best PR campaigns over the year.

From the very bottom of our hearts, we thank you once again for your great, great support. This has been and will continue to be a very fun & exciting journey for us :)

For over 2 years, Youth Asia has been unleashing the power of collective influence through YouthSays. We discovered and unleashed the collective power of collaboration through the Youth Festival.

When 88,366 young Malaysians actively participated in YOUTH’10 Malaysia’s Largest Youth Festival, Ministers and CEOs who were amazed by the feat put a challenge upon us (organizer of YOUTH’10) to create a sustainable platform for young Malaysians to lead an exciting life.

In September 2010, we created GroupsMore, a movement focused on driving Malaysians to live an exciting life in this country – to squash the myth that Malaysians need to migrate to another country to live an exciting life.

While GroupsMore (short for groups save more) enables us to get together (by the hundreds or even thousands) to experience the best restaurants, spas, activities at up to 90% discount – saving us more money, it is not just an online shopping site that features the best deals in town.

GroupsMore is the start of a consumer movement.

Why?

It’s simple, really.

The bigger our group = the more influential we are =  the higher discounts we get = the more experiences we can enjoy = the less we pay. :)

Since we launched www.groupsmore.com (less than a month ago):

• Over RM15,000 was saved
• Over 2,500 people have subscribed
• Over 1,000 vouchers was bought

So visit www.groupsmore.com now and subscribe to us! We’re pretty sure you’ll find a discount on an exciting thing to do that you like! Even if you don’t, sign up anyways, join our movement and pretty soon, we will be demanding for discounts to do and experience new things that you’d love at the lowest price possible.

It was crazy. We had over 100 activities, and in 3 days, hundreds of youths were rewarded in the competitions they won.

In 2009, the same thing happened, but on a larger scale. YOUTH’09 took a leap up the scale. We got a larger place. Over 300 volunteers signed up to help out, and had the experience of their lifetime. Youths invited friends, who invited friends, who invited friends – and more communities, businesses, leaders and government agencies stepped in to show their support.

What about the recent YOUTH’10?

It was BIGGER and BETTER.

The Festival was created for one purpose: to connect a generation of savvy youths with brands, leaders, government and the media. And it was a great success.

This year’s festival brought together 47 partners, 22 media partners, 10 youth communities, 230 schools, 40 colleges, and 4 ministries to produce a 3 days festival with over 180 activities across 6 festivals, bringing together 88,366 youths and generating 6.7m worth of PR value.

Imagine the craze.

Leaders showed their support by officiating ceremonies, touring the Festival and even entering the competitions!

The media was nothing but supportive throughout the entire Festival. Here’s what they had to say:

Participants loved it. Our partners loved it. The media loved it. And we loved it!

Looking at the success of YOUTH’10, the Youth Asia team is more excited than ever about the next Youth Festival.

YOUTH’11 is currently in its planning stage. It will be even BIGGER, even BETTER, more exciting and more engaging!

Stay tuned for updates on YOUTH’11!

In conjunction with the Youth Engagement Summit 2009, the SEAchange movement was started to connect Southeast Asian Youths to projects, organizations, businesses, and leaders who can help them achieve the change they want to see.

Along with over 120 youth organizations & communities across Southeast Asia, Youth Asia started by asking youths of Southeast Asia three simple questions.

1. What change do you want to see in your own personal life?
2. What change do you want to see in your community and country?
3. What ideas of campaigns or programmes would you support?

The results were phenomenal.

Within 6 weeks, 105,520 stories from all corners of the region were collected, compiled and presented at YES2009 to thousands of business leaders, government officials, communities, even to the panel of speakers.

Presenting… the SEAchange Youth Report.

If you’d like to know more about the SEAchange movement, click here. For more information about the Youth Engagement Summit, visit www.yes2009.asia.

Good morning believers of our generation.

We stand before a world of 6.7 billion of people. Competing. And collaborating for better quality of life.

And in this world, there are 200 million of us in Southeast Asia. Young. Aged 15 to 35. Energetic. Restless, and we are ready for change. A change for our jobs. Our education. Our family. Our personal habits. Our purpose. Our success. Our future.

We’re ready for a change. And we’ve decided to do something about it.

My name is Khailee Ng, I’m 25 years old. Through my work with youths, as cofounder of Youth Asia, and as an organizing partner of YES2009, I’d like to bring you across Southeast Asia to see what we mean by Southeast Asian youth for change.

First stop. Vietnam.

The Vietnam war. The first generation after. The Vietnamese youth heard how war has destroyed their country. And they’ve heard enough. They know that their future depends on connecting to the outside world – and communication is their passport.

So. A group of friends decided to meet up regularly for conversation. Except, they’re meeting up to speak in English. They rope in friends and foreigners who spoke the language to join them. This simple format, spread via the internet, spread across the Vietnam, created a network of meetups where youths take their English education out of the classrooms — and into their own hands.

Because they believe these small steps – can make Vietnam more accessible to the world.

Next stop. Indonesia. With a population of over 200 million. For many families, life is challenging. Often, the rights of children are left behind.

A group of Indonesian students knew the implications, and they don’t want such a fate to be passed down on the next generation. So they formed a foundation to fight for the rights of children – Representing their voice to advise the government and international bodies.

They’re doing what they can to help move the next generation of Indonesians one step forward.

Here in Malaysia,

As the country sees a need to come together as 1Malaysia to take on global competition. Internal differences often in the way.

So. A group of fresh graduates thought the only way to bring the youths together was to get them involved in activities they can do together. This led to some of the largest youth festivals organized by youths, for youths in the country.

They brought their idea to life, because they believe Malaysia’s future depends on being united TODAY.

Ladies and gentlemen

Those were just 3 stories —- handpicked out of 105,502 stories from youth across Southeast Asia…. There are many more stories from Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myannmar, Brunei…

And we are very fortunate to have 500 of the actual youths behind these stories to fly in from across the region to join us today – give them a round of applause!

These are a new breed of youth leaders armed to the teeth with weapons of mass connectivity.

Need to know something. Google.

Need to get the word out. Twitter.

Need to get friends involved? Facebook.

Need to meet like minds and get thousands more to move – there’s a way – and the young people of who are with us today will to find it.

Such is the world we live in.

Such is the power of in the hands of the youth.

Sadly.

The world has passed judgment on this generation.

Lazy. Spoilt. Indifferent. Disconnected. Hopeless. Apatethic. Rebellious. Selfish. Ego-centric….

With this we have

• Parents who cannot have dinner conversations with their teenage son.
• Employers who do not have faith in local fresh graduates
• Businesses who spend millions to buy artificial loyalty from young consumers.
• And even country leaders who disappoint the youth with the politics of greed

Such is the world we live in today.

But… the course of history is taking a turn.

What we have seen, over the past 6 weeks is a sign.

120 organizations, consisting of some of the largest universities, colleges, online communities, and NGOs across the region said hey. Let’s band together to bring out the voice of Southeast Asian youth…

Together, we collected 105,502 Stories. Millions of words, Thousands of images. Hundreds of videos. Distilled into key messages for the world to know.

Ladies & gentlemen.

We’re the first in the world to see this report at the Youth Engagement Summit.

All this is possible only because a network of believers and angels who helps us through.

There’s one man, who goes by the name of Ham. He wore was on stage just now with a turban, can’t miss him. He was one of these believers. He stood by all the mistakes a young team would’ve made, and pulled us through. Because he believed in us.

And then we have sponsors like Air Asia and Sime Darby – who also believed in the power of youth – and gave us the resources to have this conversation in the first place. They believe.

And we cannot forget, the kindness of thousands of strangers – from the travel agent who fought her way to get ONE ticket for a young Cambodian boy to come down – even though she was told all flights were full – to the volunteers who stayed up all night to make sure we had goodie bags – to 41,000 facebook fans who told a friend, who told a friend who told a friend to share their story for the SEACHANGE Youth Report. Down to global speakers who will join us in this room today. We’ve come this far.

Ladies and gentlemen – this is youth engagement.

This is the youth engagement summit.

You’re in it.

We’ve come too far to let it end here.

• Some of us have come too far as parents… to stop trying new ways to connect with our kids.
• Some of us have come too far as employers… to stop grooming our young talent
• As businesses to not champion our consumers needs
• As leaders to not lead with integrity
• As youths to stop believing in ourselves

So let us use the Youth Engagement Summit 2009 as our launchpad to so much more.

We’ve come too far as a collective, to leave our future in the hands of others, when the world is telling us that we are the change we seek.

We’ve come to far, to not go all the way.

We got 14 speakers under the age of 30 this time round. We even got a rapper to share his entrepreneurship story.

Most exciting note of all: HSBC, with their strong belief in youths & empowerment for youth entrepreneurship, stepped in and presented the Convention. Dutch Lady’s Shine co-sponsored the event, too.

It was a blast.

Participants of the Convention

Lifestyle Entrepreneurship Panel, l-r: Anna Rina, photography entrepreneur; Shan Tan, founder of Rockin’ Reptiles; Joe Flizzow, record label entrepreneur & artiste; Ninie Ahmad, yoga entrepreneur; Fiona Gomez, founder of Talent Hub. The Convention featured 14 speakers under the age of 30.

Henry Goh, COO of Macro Kiosk Berhad during the powerpacked Technopreneurship session

Photography entrepreneur Anna Rina in session

Eager participants at the front row, intrigued by a speaker’s story

Q&A slot in session

Returning for the 2nd time, YOUTH’09, Malaysia’s Largest Youth Lifestyle Festival was a massive gathering of youths with diversified interests – breakdancers, bloggers, entrepreneurs, gamers, musicians – meeting up, organizing their own get-togethers, exchanging ideas and much more.

They took part in contests.

Partied.

Strutted their talents and skills.

Made new friends.

Got rewarded.

With YOUTH’09, the diverse youth communities were given the opportunity to showcase their passion and talents to one another, thus exposing the best of Malaysian youths.

Watch the video to get a grasp of the excitement at YOUTH’09

YOUTH’09 media clippings

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13 speakers, from different industries. Technology. Music. Internet gaming. Blogging. Advertising. Photography.

What’s so special about them?

They were all successful entrepreneurs who’ve taken their respective industries by storm – all, under the age of 30. Some were even award winners, like the Deloitte Fast 500. Or the KLue Blue Chilli Award. One was even in the Malaysia’s Book of Records for being the youngest CEO of a public listed company at the age of 21.

Over 500 youths turned up, eager to hear the stories of successful entrepreneurship from these influential figures, whom they can call their peers.

The Convention had one vision: to empower youths by showing them that young people are capable of success.

Internet Advertising Entrepreneur Timothy Tiah (co founder of Nuffnang) during the Technopreneurship session

Attendees at the Convention. Over 500 youths signed up within 2 weeks.

Lifestyle Entrepeneurship panel of speakers – all under the age of 30 at the point of speaking.

Over 500 attendees of the Convention resonating the ‘war cry’ “Empowerment: Yes I Can!”