Petaling Jaya, Malaysia—UPF-Malaysia held a one-day Malaysia Leadership Seminar on September 17, 2018, with 50 participants representing government, faith groups and civil society. The theme of the one-day event was “Providing Vision and Leadership for Nation-Building and Peace.”
The opening session was moderated by Ms. Lina Cheng, vice president of the Malaysia branch of the Women’s Federation for World Peace. It began with an introductory presentation about UPF, given by Mr. Yutaka Yamada, national overseas director of UPF-Malaysia, in which he shared UPF’s vision for peace and how it is contributing to peace building around the world. This was followed by a presentation by Dr. Amir Farid bin Dato Isahak, chairman of the Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship of Malaysia. Dr. Amir drew interesting similarities between the core values of UPF and those of the Islamic faith and testified to the universality of the causes championed by UPF.
This was followed by several presentations on the UPF Peace Principles. Mr. Sudesh Balasubramaniam, president of UPF-Malaysia gave two presentations: “An Introduction to UPF’s Peace Principles” and “The Family and World Peace,” and Mr. Lai Peng Keong, president of the Malaysia chapter of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, spoke on the topic of sustainable peace. They stressed the importance of the character-building initiative focused on pure love education for young people and the marriage and family blessing movement being actively carried out by UPF for the sake of nation-building and peace.
This was followed by an activity report and a call for action by Mr. Ng Shu Lin, secretary general of UPF-Malaysia. The emcee, Ms. Yan Ting, kept the program flowing, and it ended with the song, “You Raise Me Up,” performed by Mr. Albert Lee.