IPOH, May 23 — The Malaysian overseas volunteers who played a vital role in delivering postal votes during last year’s general election are celebrating Global Malaysian Network’s (GMN) first anniversary in style with a compilation of music videos involving students from 25 schools across the country.
The five-minute long video, which was part of GMN’s Project Anak Malaysia 2019, connects up to 1,500 students and teachers from Sarawak, Sabah, Kedah, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Melaka, Johor, Negri Sembilan and Terengganu.
“This is the first music video under the Project Anak Malaysia 2019. We choose school students from Malaysia to represent the youth group.
“This is the Student Edition and we have a few more different editions coming up this year,” Project Anak Malaysia 2019 project leader Yap Lu Ying told Malay Mail.
In the days leading up to the elections, many overseas Malaysians registered as postal voters had received ballots far too late to be sent home by courier in time for polling day.
However, Malaysians worldwide joined forces to pass their ballots along in a “relay race” carried out by volunteer vote-runners who flew home to deliver the votes in person.
The connection formed during this effort led a group of overseas Malaysians to set up GMN on Facebook. The organisation currently has 26,000 members, which spans over 99 countries.
Yap said they decided to launch the Student Edition music video on May 13 in conjunction with GMN’s anniversary, as the group was created on the same date last year.
“By a happy accident, GMN was formed on May 13, 2018. So the founders hope this can help convert the ‘dark’ date from our nation’s past into a positive marker of a new and more united Malaysia.
“This is also the reason why we chose to release the Student Edition on our anniversary, hoping to instil patriotism in our future leaders,” she added.
Yap said the bilingual song Our Home Our Dream sung by the students in the video was composed by Isaac Chong, who is an award-winning composer in Hong Kong.
“We held a lyrics competition among GMN members in February and we received six submissions. Among the people who submitted the lyrics are Ong Xin Yi, Li-Ann Choo, Syamim Fakhri and Ivy Ngeow.
“We decided to choose nice lines from all the submission and turned them into a song. So it’s a combined effort,” she said.
Yap said the schools were selected via open recruitment through social media.
“Initially, 77 schools registered, but only 25 schools managed to submit the videos.
“A demo of the song, which was sung by Charis Chua, a singer-song writer in Taiwan, was sent to all the teachers prior to the video shooting. All shooting and recording were done by schools with the help of the teachers,” she said.
Since its released, the video has reached up to 13,500 users on Facebook and garnered over 3,000 views on YouTube.
Among other music videos, which will be released under the project, is the Local Edition, which is expected to be released between late June and early July, the Global Edition in mid-August to celebrate Merdeka day and the Anak Malaysia Edition in early September to celebrate Malaysia Day.
GMN had also previously launched a video performance of the popular patriotic song, Sejahtera Malaysia, in conjunction with Malaysia’s 61st Independence Day celebration last August.
