Projek57 is a social enterprise with a focus on promoting unity and celebrating diversity. Through the t-shirts they sell, they want to share their vision and hope for Malaysia.
In that spirit, the founders are setting out on a new project in the months of August and September: Projek57 Unity Ride.
The goal? To cycle all around Malaysia in a series of legs, to bring out beautiful stories from Malaysians across our nation.
They’ll be accompanied by their team members, some of their past beneficiaries and even some corporate partners are in for the ride.
Starting on the 6th of August, the co-founders are inviting members of the public to join them for a 7km ride around Kuala Lumpur city, in conjunction with KL Car Free Morning.
After that, they will start off a 57km ride to the first pit-stop at IOI City Mall Putrajaya.
In conjunction with this event, a special Unity tee-shirt has been launched. Part of the proceeds from the sale of this tee-shirt will go towards underprivileged youths.
As part of their usual efforts, Projek57 engage underprivileged youths by helping them build communication skills and confidence through retail training. In fact, two of their orang asli youth retail trainees will travel with them on their journey across Malaysia.
However, their main focus is to promote greater awareness of unity among Malaysian youths who are the future of this country through various projects.
The founders, Syed Sadiq Albar and Collin Swee shared, “We want people to join us in rising above the negative vibes, and focus on what is great, wonderful and beautiful about Malaysia.”
“We share the vision of our beloved first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, that, ‘Our future depends on how well many different kinds of people can live and work together‘. With the unity ride, we hope Malaysians will come together and share our hope that we can make a difference in our nation.”
Along the way, they’ll be making cycling pit-stops at universities and schools to engage youth.
“We will be engaging them through dialogues and workshops in universities and schools following the theme ‘Unity in Our Eyes’,” the team told us.
It’s no coincidence that the ride is also in our Merdeka month, right on the 6oth anniversary of our independence.
“It’s our 60th year of independence and we wanted to do something interesting and we felt it would be kinda cool and crazy to cycle everyday nationwide and go interstate meeting people and engaging with our fellow countrymen and women.”
“Malaysia is so beautiful and what better way to experience it. Instead of being in a car, we will be on bikes, at a slower pace, so we get to soak in all its beauty.”
The team are aiming to complete a total of at least 700km of cycling around West Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak.
They explained that the bar was set at that number because, “we wanted to challenge ourselves during the cycle and to have a focus to motivate and keep us going”.
We asked if they would be doing any special training in preparation for the ride. Cycling is an intense activity, as can be seen from this viral photo of a cyclist’s legs after Tour de France.
The founders replied, “We—especially Sadiq— have been cycling a couple of times a week and we have been increasing the frequency since the beginning of July.” They also try to go regularly for classes and sports, in the run-up to the big cycle.
At the end of the day, the team is simply hoping their ride can become a small beacon of hope and positivity in our country.
“We also want to bring back from the smaller towns and kampungs, stories of bonds and relationships forged amongst Malaysians. Everyone has a story to tell, and we want to discover these stories and share them.”
“We hope by this that more and more people will also be encouraged to tell their own story of what unity means to them. And maybe, who knows, be inspired to do something or start their own little project,” they said.
Feature Image Credit: Projek57
