Business enterprise is one of the most effective means of alleviating poverty through the process of job and wealth creation. B4T is about creating partnerships between business people and entrepreneurs to establish profitable and sustainable businesses among indigenous communities that are in need of social, economic, environmental and spiritual transformation. By sharing learnings and successes we hope to encourage more business professionals to be involved in order to make a significant impact.
RAYMOND YAP
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Co-founder of B4T.org, an OM initiative to mobilize business people into mission
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Chairman of the Board of OM Malaysia for 15 years (2000 – Feb 2015)
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30 years business experience as global CEO of an MNC
ALEX ALI BASAH
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Managing Partner of legal firm, Ali Basah and Partners, based in Bintulu.
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Passionate about land rights and music
Land is typically the most important asset as rural communities depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. With this understanding, this critical track looks into protecting indigenous land rights, and to formulate major land reform efforts to ensure that families gain secure rights to the land they occupy and farm
TRACK #3 : LAND RIGHTS.
TRACKS AND TRACK CHAMPIONS
TRACK #1 : BUSINESS 4 TRANSFORMATION.
LEE HWOK AUN
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Senior Lecturer – Head, Department of Development Studies, Faculty of Economics & Administration, University of Malaya.
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Research interests - affirmative action, inequality, labour, social policy, discrimination, and education
The importance of Research cannot be downplayed. This track hopes to harness the best of analytical and innovative minds to identify and interpret vital information that will assist in mapping and prioritising activities.
TRACK #4 SOCIOECONOMIC RESEARCH.
WONG YOUNG SOON
•Executive Director –Malaysian CARE Bhd
•Young Soon has been working with the Orang Asli since 1992
TRACK #5: RURAL DEVELOPMENT
This track explores ways to accelerate rural economic growth through potential micro-enterprise development in integrated farming, developing distribution networks and through cooperatives.
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MARGARET LOY
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Trained as a lawyer
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Director of Community Excel Services
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Desires to see a holistic gospel preached and practiced
TRACK #6 : URBAN POVERTY ERADICATION.
Given that the urban poor are landless, and set against a backdrop of relentless rural-urban migration, the complexity of solutions to provide access to formal jobs makes this track the most challenging one, as this requires the harnessing of multi prong approaches.
POLINE BALA
•Associate Professor & Head of Dept, UNIMAS. Her interests include Asian Studies, Social & Anthropology, Society and Technology. Her foremost interest is in anthropology of Bornean societies, and also political ethnography.
All over the world, women play the pivotal role in implementing sustainable development solutions to economic empowerment of impoverished communities. This Working Group hopes to unlock this potential and to spearhead several key initiatives under the umbrella of NEEC 2015.
TRACK #7 : WOMEN.
JOHN LING
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Quantity Surveyor by profession
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Chairman for Council of Missions for Methodist Church in Malaysia
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Chairman of Missions and Evangelism Committee for the World Federation of Chinese Methodist Churches
Education will provide rural students with access to job opportunities and the knowledge and skills to navigate their future. This track intends to lay a strong foundation through rural preschool education, value added and holistic knowledge and skill-based development, rural hostel care, tuition and higher education placement.