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| The Roi of Hope – For Those Who Believe! |
| Tuesday, 10 November 2009 13:57 |
 Hope can do wonders. It can sell products and services, like how marketers spend billions on hope: advertising and promotions every year. In the precarious world of advertising, we sell hope (ideas) to clients, hope the client buys them, hope the consumers buy, and the agency hopes it gets paid! While bankers hope to make money out of our money. Investors hope to make money out of their investments. Even a US President has been elected on the wings of hope, after writing about the audacity of it all. In his speech addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama said: “In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!" Hope put man on the moon. Hope made AirAsia what it is today. Hope is the reason we wake up every morning. Hope lends itself endearingly to the act of forgiveness. Strangely enough, not many people question the price of hope. And yet the human race exists because of it. We hope we will go to heaven. We hope we live forever. We hope we get rich. And Pakatan Rakyat hopes to win in 2012. Fat hopes, you may add? It was with the premise of hope that we embarked on the Youth Engagement Summit (YES) 2009. And it all began with the hope we had in the next generation of thinkers, leaders and innovators. And to that end, Dato Seri Tony Fernandes stepped forward (without blinking) to help us kickstart this astronomical project. A million Youth, satellite feeds across Southeast Asia, a constellation of the best inspiring speakers on the planet, a music album, Twitter central, on CNN, all adds up to hope of the highest order (or risk, you may add). When Tony and our Prime Minister gave us their implicit blessings our circle of hope was completed. And we stepped up to the plate. Travelled the world (sometime 33 hours point-to-point), almost a hundred meetings later YES has become the culmination of all that sweat, tears and hope. No one person can take credit for this. Because it belongs to all of us. But I would like to acknowledge that without Tony, none of this would have been possible. Our sponsors namely Sime Darby Berhad, supporters, media partners, over 200 youth communities across Southeast Asia and our friends (too many to mention) helped us all create this historic event. Truth is, no one can guarantee anything based on hope. And that ladies and gentlemen, is the true ROI of Hope! Sledgehammer is organizing YES 2009 on Nov 16 & 17 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) featuring Sir Bob Geldof, Garry Kasparov, Biz Stone, Amitabh Bachchan and more… www.yes2009.asia |
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