Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A Touch of Harmony Progam at NYU

Jamiyah Singapore is a magnificent and far ranging organization comprised of a host of social welfare activities that seem to cover all areas both of human need, as well as those of personal aspiration, and social improvement. It's founder and president is the bright, peaceful, pleasant visionary Abu Bakar Maidin, whom I had the honor and pleasure of meeting on my recent travels to Dublin.

One of the projects of Jamiya Singapore is the Touch of Harmony Program, now in its 6th successful year. In its own words:
In this experiential programme, a team of students and faculty members from New York University and various Universities in Singapore are given the opportunity to visit each other’s homeland to observe, work together and actively partake in educational, developmental and welfare missions and activities so as to learn about different socio-cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

On July 20, Touch of Harmony program leaders Mohamad Hosni Abdul Malik of Jamiyah Singapore, and Ms. Valerie Cabral of NYU invited me to spend an evening with this year's leadership participants. I shared with them my experiences and guidance from the pursuit of harmony among the world's religions, and endeavored to answer questions.

My experience was wonderful. The caliber of the students/program participants was superior in all ways.. These young people were enormously bright, engaged, informed, and present.

We had a couple of pictures together, one in the lecture hall,



And one over dinner with the photographer who humbly took the picture and missed the chance to pose with us.