UiTM students set up first Junior Enterprise
Published on: Friday, June 24, 2016
SHAH ALAM: A group of post-graduate students from University Teknologi MARA have set up Malaysia's first Junior Enterprise modelled along the lines of the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises (JADE) concept.Junior Enterprises are non-profit business organisations affiliated with a university, offering professional services to the market.The companies are run by students as a means to provide them with real-world working and business experience to better prepare them for the working world.
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The Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) said in a statement Thursday that the UiTM students had established MYJE Enterprises, after the students, known as The Revivors team, were declared winners of a recent competition organised by it.They received a seed fund of RM40,000 from CIDB in the Rebuild It Green competition aimed at finding sustainable solutions to mitigate the impact of natural disasters.MYJE Enterprises will also receive mentoring assistance from JADE and the Brazilian Junior Enterprise Confederation, Brasil Junior.MYJE team leader Kamarul Ariff said the recent series of natural disasters across the Asia Pacific, especially floods that struck the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia in December 2014, served as inspiration for their prize winning Disaster Management and Mitigation Plan (DMMP) mobile phone application in the competition.
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He said the team would commercialise the mobile phone application through their Junior Enterprise."The basis of the DMMP is to prevent people from becoming flood victims. We chose floods as Malaysia is prone to this.
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"We believe that DMMP is an appropriate tool to mitigate the impact of natural disasters for the public. We created something that takes on a holistic approach to the problem and so our idea is cost efficient and sustains various aspects of nature, management and human interaction," said Kamarul.DMMP is a set of flood mitigation guidelines and a complementary mobile application called myBanjir, intended for local authorities and the public to utilise in the event of severe flooding."We will start promoting DMMP to the nearest local authorities and those in Kelantan and Pahang as these states suffer from seasonal flooding," said team member, Martini Alwi.As pioneers in Malaysia, UiTM's junior entrepreneurs are eager to take their plans forward and have already set up a timeline for their activities."This year we will develop the company's base and have the myBanjir app ready for testing by the year-end," said Kamarul of his group's plans for MYJE Enterprise.Another team member, Vivian Anne Thomas said, the team would adapt imported modern technologies or tools from other countries for use for the first time in Malaysia."We believe that these tools, such as flood barriers, plastic wraps and compact inflatable rafts, can be applied and prepared affordably and set up quickly," she added.The Revivors team also hopes to register the company under UTM's entrepreneurship department and plans to encompass the ideas of other budding university student entrepreneurs to ensure long term sustainability.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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