THE COMMITMENT to building sustainable futures for the young is not restricted within Malaysian borders, as clearly demonstrated by energy conglomerate Petronas. The company’s coveted Petronas Education Sponsorship Programme (PESP) extends its reach to deserving international students from far-flung territories -- areas where Petronas operates -- in a meritorious display of its belief in developing and enriching the international pool of talents. Furthermore, granting the opportunity to them underscores the company’s commitment to enrich the communities where it is present.
PESP beneficiaries Fatima Chaw Su Maung from Myanmar and Alek Deng Cyer Rehan from South Sudan are such examples of Petronas’ continuous commitment to education and the organisation’s recognition that education provides the firmest foundation on which to build a sustainable future.
Speaking to The Star, both Fatima, 20, and Rehan, 18, are pursuing their tertiary education at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) in Perak, which has recently retained its position as Malaysia’s top private university by QS Asia university rankings. They are amongst the more than 1,200 deserving international students with high academic calibre and leadership capabilities from 25 different countries that have been offered placement in UTP under PESP since 1998.
Fatima, a Myanmarese PESP recipient studying in UTP said Petronas' student liaison officers had gone above and beyond to ensure that she had access to all resources during her first few months in Malaysia.
Fatima, the eldest of three in her family, is now in her second year of Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at UTP. The Myanmarese praised the student liaison officers from Petronas who helped her from the time she knew of the award, to when she was enrolled as an international student on campus.
“The team at Petronas was so warm and helpful, ” she related, describing in detail how the PESP student liaison team members went above and beyond to ensure that Fatima, who is experiencing life away from home in Myanmar, had access to all resources during the transition period.
This is especially important for a young person who considers her family her “backbone”. “My father, a merchant, spent most of his income on educating my siblings and I, and he never once complained about his hardships, ” she says, which makes her more determined to make him proud by excelling in her tertiary education.
“I’ve learned so much from being part of a really diverse community of students and academic staff at UTP, ” she enthuses, while adding that leadership, personal enrichment and self-improvement programmes by Petronas are enormously beneficial in helping her as well as other sponsored students prepare for adulthood.
Hard work pays off and teamwork is important as you get to learn a lot from each other, said Rehan, a PESP recipient from South Sudan.
Making up part of the diverse community of students at UTP is Rehan, who had studied and resided in Uganda in addition to her home country of South Sudan. Having a lawyer for a father and a businesswoman for a mother, Rehan aspires to be both a successful petroleum engineer upon graduation and to eventually run her own successful business one day. “I learnt about responsibility at a young age as I was like a second mother to my four younger siblings, ” she says. The experience no doubt had contributed to her mature and independent nature.
“Throughout my process and journey of knowing about the PESP and being awarded this incredible sponsorship, I learned that hard work really pays off, and that teamwork is really important, ” she notes. “You get to learn a lot from each other.”
Rehan first stepped foot in the UTP campus in Tronoh in January this year, and will soon be completing the foundation year of a five-year Petroleum Engineering degree. She has adjusted to student life and is learning about Malaysia’s diverse multicultural environment which has made her experience of being away from home much more bearable.
“I want to work hard and succeed so that I can support my family and tell my parents, who have been so supportive of me for so long, that they will never have to work again, ” she says. “I want to be able, in the future, to also help the less fortunate in getting an education, ” says the determined and empathetic student.
Both Fatima and Rehan embody what is possible when corporate commitment to sustainability is put in motion and realised. Both students represent the cross-border future of collaboration, global knowledge enrichment and a broadening of horizons for the world’s growing pool of future talents, and it is thanks to far-sighted conglomerates such as Petronas that such lives can be enriched and dreams can be made a reality.
