Goodday KidSTART: The largest child entrepreneur program, the most participation in Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR: The leading milk brand, Susu Goodday, through its largest child entrepreneur program, Goodday KidSTART, brought down the curtain successfully when it received 340 entries from children between the ages of seven and 14 from all over the country.
Vice President of Ethical Marketing, Amy Gan said, the program is the company’s continuous effort to cultivate a culture of financial literacy, instill entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of responsibility among children.
“Goodday KidSTART is not only fighting about financial literacy, but also building business ideas.
“You can also learn critical thinking skills, build confidence levels including presentation skills.
“All these are soft skills that are important for their future,” he said when met by reporters at the Goodday KidSTART Closing Ceremony at a hotel here, recently.
Commenting further, Amy said, the encouraging participation in the program also received recognition from the ‘Malaysian Book of Records’ as the largest ‘kid-preneur’ program for recording the largest number of program participants.
“This program has been recognized in The Malaysia Book of Records because it is the ‘kid-preneur’ program in Malaysia which in terms of the number of participants is as many as 340 participants from all over Malaysia.
“Moving forward is to convey this (idea) to the Ministry of Education so that we can make this campaign a bigger success and more children benefit from this campaign,” she said.
Meanwhile, out of 340 entries, 20 participants were shortlisted to attend an intensive business training camp that lasted for two days.
Successfully shortlisted participants will have to present their ideas to a panel of judges consisting of the Chairman of Portman Education Group, Ernie Chen; Founder of Coffee for Good Faridah Halina Zairi; Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Suri Inspirasi Sdn Bhd, Salena Ahmad and Senior Brand Manager for Goodday Milk, Chin Yien Yien.
In addition, participants also have to go through a series of modules, from learning good entrepreneurial and financial habits to the basics of presenting a business plan to potential investors.
At the end of the camp, eight winners took home a cash prize of RM51,000 to start their business ideas.
The first prize of RM20,000 was won by Fatimah Basyeerah Mohamed Ackiel with the business idea of developing a stroke cognitive skills rehabilitation software application.
Meanwhile, the second prize worth RM10,000 went to Ong Joon Zach for his business idea CocoCool, which is a coconut squeezer capable of squeezing fresh coconut water in one step.
For the third prize worth RM5,000 was given to Fredston Wang Le Dong through the STEMS, Science, Technology, Experiment Module Subscription business idea.
The fourth and fifth prizes bring home money amounting to RM4,000 and RM3,000 respectively.
Next, the awards for Best Presenter, Most Innovative Idea and New Young Star each took home RM3,000.
For the record, the first phase of the Goodday KidSTART ‘kid-preneur’ program took place from 21 November 2022 to 25 January 2023, through the transmission of ideas using video format by participants, and will be organized for a second time in the future.
