When we first started picking up litter, my friends said it was tiring. They said they wanted 100 more to turn up to do it together with us. A month and a half later, they got just what they wished for. On the 2nd of August 2019, we did it with over 100 more participants in front of Sri Iskandar Business Centre's McDonald's, recounts Jabir.
To get a sense of what Jabir is promoting, after an environmental challenge dubbed #Trashtag, which encourages people to pick up trash from beaches, parks, roadsides, and other public spaces went viral, Jabir nominated Her Majesty, Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah for the challenge on twitter.
The challenge consists of before pictures of areas full of litter and trash heaps and after pictures of what they look like cleaned up.
Surprisingly, a couple of days later, Jabir got a reply from Her Majesty. Her Majesty commended him and said it was a good effort. Instead, Her Majesty asked Jabir to get a hold of her son, Tengku Hassanal Ibrahim Alam Shah, the Crown Prince of Pahang to join him for the challenge.
In September, they met up and carried out the challenge at Pantai Sepat Kuantan, Pahang. Jabir is a chemical engineering undergraduate student at UTP. He says, in his study, there's an environmental major. This is how he picked up the awareness.
He says, look around us, Singapore is clean because they impose heavy fines, Japan on the other hand is clean because of its people's behavior. So, why don't we clean up Malaysia, make Malaysia a truly clean country.
To date, Jabir's environmentally conscious activities have gained widespread traction on social. As a result of this, Jabir and his friends recently collaborated with UITM Seri Iskandar for a similar event. On the 21st of September, a turn up of 300 good Samaritans helped to clean Bandar Seri Iskandar. The program was supported by UTP's Centre of Student Development department. In addition, Jabir also managed to get support from like-minded business sponsors.
He pleads all Malaysians to join hands to make Malaysia cleaner. It's an opportunity to really care for our environment he says.
While his rise to social media stardom had created a lot of buzz, Jabir remains modest about it. Now, Jabir boasts a 138 thousand strong following on Instagram. He says his social media following skyrocketed after the video of him as a trophy boy went viral at the Anugerah Meletop ERA 2019 awards show, which took place at the Axiata Arena, Bukit Jalil on April 21. Within three days after appearing as the trophy boy, his Instagram just literally exploded, jokes Jabir.
However, Jabir says, he remains an outlier in environmental effort. Therefore, Jabir has plans to collaborate with more parties to spread the awareness. When we first did it, cleaning the place was straight forward he says.
Following this, Jabir has been approached by many parties to collaborate. To make sure his enterprising ideas can make real social impact, Jabir is currently in the midst of setting up his own non-profit organization (NGO).
The goal is to stretch the nation's youth ambition, Jabir says of his NGO. He plans to reach out throughout Malaysia. Here, it is very calm. Instead of busy with a social life, we are instead always thinking how we can contribute to change the world.
For all of the nation's intent, I want all of us to know that you can now trust our youth to navigate the challenges.
I've always wanted to create my own platform to embed meaningful change, he says. I have a lot of innovative ideas, but I need a platform that can bring together all Malaysians to further the nation's social causes. Until you create a platform upon which you can thrive, you are not going to go far, Jabir stresses.
Next, a tour is in the pipeline for Jabir. Following a recent YES 4G event, Jabir plans to hold a running, plus 'picking up litter' event. In addition, Jabir is also planning a camping program somewhere in December this year.
Indeed, this is another prime example of UTP's profound career connected learning and industry collaboration. From the work we do, we foster long-term relationships with our global social-impact partners to prepare our students, people and researchers as global citizens.
As a leading university in engineering, science and technology, our graduates are driven to exceed their professional objectives and contribute towards overcoming capability deficit across all sectors and industries.
