Message from Pahlawan

Through the Visit Malaysia Cybercampaign, Pahlawan is committed to help small and medium sized travel and tour operators in Malaysia to present their offerings creatively via the Internet and other marketing media. Malaysians are invited to compose personal messages, write them with their heart, to share the fascination of Malaysia with their friends abroad.

Today we celebrate the commencement of a partnership between Pahlawan, a people's voluntary network dedicated to the well-being of Malaysians; and Tourism Malaysia, Malaysia's tourism promotion agency in launching the National Visit Malaysia Cybercampaign and the Think Holiday Think Malaysia! competition. We hope this marks the beginning of our partnership with various government agencies in advancing the well being of Malaysians.

Pahlawan earmarked the tourism sector as the lead economic sector for the nation's economic recovery. It is our belief that Malaysian tourism, still at its infancy, and have not been over-promoted to developed markets, holds great promise and potential. This extensive cybercampaign hopes to achieve the following:

• Mobilize as many Malaysians as possible to participate in the campaign by sending e-mail messages and e-cards to their friends abroad to ask them to "Think Holiday, Think Malaysia!" Our goal is to send 50 million e-cards over the contest period of 6 months ending on National Day, August 31, 1999.

Malaysians were invited to support the campaign by sending at least ten messages each, and ask their friends to forward this message to at least ten of their friends.

Since the campaign soft launch on December 1, 1998, some 300,000 email were sent out and the campaign received favorable publicity from both local and international media. http://pahlawan.com.my/html/media.html

• Pahlawan volunteers built a platform with essential links to tourism and other key information sites on Malaysia to help foreign visitors to better appreciate Malaysia. We will continue to expand the site to make it a useful gateway for Malaysian travel and tour operators to reach key market sectors, and for foreigners to access Malaysian players in the tourism sector. We also hope that this platform will provide a "teamwork" approach to tourism promotion in this country, helping the various operators to grow as a cluster.
• We are especially committed to help small and medium sized operators to effectively package and present their offerings using the multi-media capability of the Internet. As soon as we raise enough funding to execute this, we will announce concessions for our small and medium sized operators. Sponsorship are sought to support the continued expansion of this cyber platform.
• Through this project, we are also committed to develop IT Commons, matching volunteers who are willing to adopt neighborhood schools to conduct e-mail and IT workshops with schools needing help. We believe this is the fastest way the country can accelerate the expansion of IT skills.

We call on members of the public with any degree of management and IT talent to volunteer to help actualize this project. Contact Pahlawan at pahlawan@po.jaring.my .

We thank all our supporters and sponsors for their contribution in cash and in kind in making this initiative possible. We also thank all the individual volunteers who have devoted invaluable time, expertise and advice, both in person and through cyberspace.

And to the media, THANK YOU for working with us to revive voluntarism and strengthen the cohesiveness and self-reliance of our communities.