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SINGAPORE: A local youth-award winner has added an ASEAN award to her Singapore accolade.
Ms Melissa Aratani Kwee, winner of the Singapore Youth Awards 2007 (Community and Youth Services), was conferred the ASEAN Youth Award.
The award recognises the outstanding contributions of ASEAN youth towards regional development and cooperation.
The honour is given to winners of National Youth Awards from the respective ASEAN members for their active work in the field of youth.
Ms Kwee received the accolade at the prestigious ASEAN Youth Day Award Presentation in Myanmar on October 5.
Recipients of the award were given the opportunity to showcase their achievements through a presentation to their fellow ASEAN counterparts and officials.
Ms Kwee, the chairperson of Halogen Foundation Singapore, is dedicated to the youth community. As a young girl, she had always dreamt of promoting greater understanding between people and comfort those who were hurt.
After obtaining her Bachelor's Degree in Social Anthropology at Harvard University, Ms Kwee began pursuing her dream by taking up leadership positions in community organisations, and spearheading a series of youth leadership programmes.
One of her earliest initiatives was Project Access, a leadership education programme for girls that sought to "broaden the realm of the possible", which she founded in 1996.
For five years, Ms Kwee worked with local schools, community organisations and government institutions and created a network of Leadership Resource Partnerships across Singapore to serve as mentors and role models for youths.
From 2002 to 2006, as president of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Ms Kwee initiated groundbreaking projects such as the Stop Demand for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children Campaign and Financial Education for Migrant Women Workers.
In 2006, Ms Kwee founded another programme, "Beautiful People", to reach out to teenage girls who lacked strong social and family support by offering lifeskill programmes and the opportunity to be mentored by "big sisters".
Ms Kwee regularly speaks at youth events and has addressed many public gatherings such as the BP-CISCO Corporate Social Responsibility Forum in 2002, the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations in 2001 and the State of the World Forum in 1997.
- CNA/ir
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