UKQE ASSIGNMENT 1 : REFLECTION 2

Reporting

Muttamizh Panpaatu Vizha (MPV) is an event organized by Persatuan Mahasiswa Hindu (PMH) of University Technology Malaysia. The main objective of this event is to create awareness of the importance of our mother tongue, Tamil and to encourage students of all ages to keep using Tamil by organizing various competition for all students. This even was held on 19 October 2019 at  Dewan Sultan Ibrahim of UTM and Dewan Chancellor of UTM for competition and award ceremony purposes. Hundreds of students from primary school to universities joined this event. Some of the competitions that was conducted are choir, debate, public speaking, dance competition, singing competition, fancy dress competition, and memorizing and presenting “thirukural”. I was an exco in the event. I was under the marketing department. I had a head of department and a manager above me. Our department was to market out event and spread the word about this event. To be specific I was incharge of the social media management which was whatsapp and Instagram. I was incharge of posting posters and messages in both of the platforms. Although the event was only for a day, our preparation started from the previous semester. I also helped other departments such as the place preparation department, to prepare the halls for the competition, the gimmick department for preparing props for their gimmick, the movement control team for taking care of the students’ movement and also the registration team to register the participants.

Hence, I can divide my duties according to the timeline which was before, during and after the event. Before the event started I was doing my duty as an exco of the marketing department. I contacted several TV shows, radio channels and also newspapers to market our event. Some of the TV shows and radio channels I contacted are, a tamil TV show named “Vizhutugal” from the channel called “Vaanavil” and a few other radio channels such as “THR Raaga” and “Minnal Fm”. I also tried to advertise our event on newspapers such as NewsStraitsTimes, and theStar but since the budget was quite high we were not able to afford to advertise there. However, we managed to book an interview session with a radio channel and a few Indian celebrities helped us to promote our event on their social media. Other than that, we also had to do countdown captions. Each of us have to write captions for the countdown posts both in Tamil and English. Once done, we had to get approval from our leaders and then we have to share them on our social media. This was one of the techniques we used to attract more participants. Other than helping my own team, I also helped the gimmick department where I helped them in terms of drawing the pictures, and preparing props for their gimmick. I also helped a bit on the dance choreography for the entrance performance. I also helped the place preparation team a day before the event to prepare the place by setting up the chairs and decorating the halls.

On the day of the event, my work as a marketing team member ended. However, I had to help the registration team to register the participants and take care of some of the problems such as unlisted registered participants name. I had to be at the hall around 7.00 am to start registering participants. The registration ended around 11am and then I had to help the students’ movement control team to bring the participants to the respected areas of their competition since different competitions were going on at different areas of the halls.

After the event ended, I also helped the place preparation team again to clean up the halls. The event ended around 9pm and hence the cleaning process only started after it.

2) Responding

I really felt very empowered and I learned a lot in terms of marketing and also I learned about other departments. I had the confident of even being a director for other events as I had knowledge about most of the departments and how to run an event. I felt very knowledgeable and also I felt very happy and satisfied for being able to contribute to the growth of my mother tongue.

On the other hand, I also felt very tired and stressed sometimes because, since this was a very big event and it can be considered as a national event since we were bringing in most of the universities all around Malaysia, we had to be always working on the event by attending meetings every week and keeping ourselves updated. We faced a lot of issues internally and externally that we had to settle in order to keep the event running smoothly. Moreover, since the event was in the middle of the semester we had to manage our time properly in order to be balanced. Sometimes, personally I even went through disagreements with my leaders for certain issues and this also contributed to the stress. Other than that, I also felt sorry for certain leaders who did not receive enough support from their own team members which led me and some of my friends to give a hand. Hence, this event made me think and behave more maturely when I had to handle and face all kinds of problems and people. This is what I felt before and after the event.

During the event, I felt very responsible. This is because there were several students who were under me where I had to lead them to place they had to go. I also felt responsible to take care of our university’s name. Since there were students from different universities and underage students I felt responsible to make sure none of our committee members or attendees of the event to behave inappropriately that gives a negative impact on the participants and others around us. I also felt very tired since I had to run everywhere to make sure everything is alright and I also made sure to help people who needs help. Although there were numerous misunderstandings between the committee members, the event ended well and went on smoothly. That made me happy and also I felt very happy to see the winners when their names were announced during the award giving ceremony.

3) Relating

I have been to MPV 2018 which was held at the same venue. The difference between the previous event and this event were the high committee members and also the committee members. I was a participant in a competition during the previous MPV event. I took part in the Kolam drawing competition and won consolation price. When I joined the event I felt very fascinated by how the event was organized so perfectly and in a matured manner. I loved to see the bond among the committee members. They were very understanding and I could clearly see the team spirit and the sportsmanship among them. Hence, that motivated me to join as a committee member in the following year as a committee member. I have also been to similar events organized by PMH and has always wanted to be a part of the committee member.

To my personal experience, I have also conducted and participated such events during my schooling days. I have always joined competitions related to Tamil language. I also have been the president of our school’s Tamil Club and I was also the vice president of the club the year before. I have also held certain positions in different clubs and hence I had experience of handling people of different positions and races. For example, I have also organized a similar event like this during my school which is called to celebrate Ponggal. I also organized numerous competitions that involved students of different races. I was also the director for organizing a farewell event for our seniors during my schooling days. Hence, I can relate to how it feels like to be a director here in university.  I also had to handle people and various problems to make sure that the event runs smoothly and end well.

I was also a marketing manager in AIESEC during my 1^st year in university. I was in both local and national team of AIESEC in Malaysia. Hence, I was very well trained in terms of marketing. I do know the tips and tricks to promote an event better among others. For example, when I was in AIESEC I have made a parody video of “I want it I got it” song by Arianna Grande to promote our food waste campaign. I have also conducted an online competition to promote our campaign among others through social media. I have contacted celebrities and Instagram famous icons to promote our campaign. I have also contacted various companies for sponsorship. I have also gave a few ideas to promote one of our events when I was in Matriculation. It actually worked really well and brought a lot of attendees to the event. Most of my ideas involves people of all races and hence I have never had a trouble in communicating with people of different races.

Hence, I realized that I had the skills to be a part of the committee members of MPV. I had leadership skills, I have good communication skills where I can communicate with mass media and convince them to promote our event in their media. With this skill, I was positive that I would be a very beneficial member of our upcoming committee.

4) Reasoning- 

The most important aspect of this event is that, we got to achieve our mission of creating awareness about the use of our mother tongue among youngsters and also encourage them to use our mother tongue. Most of them realized the importance of speaking with our mother tongue and not to be ashamed to speak their native language in front of others. In terms of what I learned through this event is that, as mentioned above, I also realized the importance of using our mother tongue and I also learned numerous ways to create awareness and to encourage youngsters and the upcoming generations to keep using our language without feeling ashamed of it.

Other than that, I also learned to think from different perspectives especially in terms of promoting our event to others I had to think from different perspectives. Before the event, when I had to promote our event to students, I had to think like a student to know what will attract the students to make them attend our event. In terms of promoting our event to mass media I also had to think like a media person such as what benefit will they get by promoting our event. I also had to think like a finance department head to think of the cost that will take to promote our event in platforms as such.

5) Reconstructing

If I had to join this committee again in the upcoming years or at least similar events or if I have to conduct another event on my own, I will do certain things differently in the future. Some of them are, the way the committee members are chosen. If I was the director, I would be conducting proper interviews with lecturers and advisors and postgraduate students as a the interviewers to interview students to select the high committee members and then, the high committee members will be conducting another interview to choose their team members according to their preference and under the director’s and advisor’s supervision. If I were the committee member and if I was still under the marketing department, I would start doing my promotion campaign way earlier than when we started previously. The promotion should be all year long in social medias to provoke curiosity among the followers and I would find better ways to promote the event. This idea is supported by the upcoming MPV director and is being implemented by him for the upcoming MPV event already. This change will definitely benefit everyone as promoting earlier will reduce last minute preparations and students’ workload. It will also benefit the head of departments by having deserving and the best team members and none of them will be facing teamwork problems.

(2038 words)