Meet Our Participants: Team Building

Team Name:

Team Building

Team Members:

• Jonathan Hwa Soong Yi (Singapore Management University)
• Hwa Yue Yi (Williams College, Massachusetts)
• Hwa En Ning (University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus)
• Kelly Lim (Singapore Management University)

Why do you wish to join MPPC 2011?

Anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber argues that "policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted". While we recognize the truth in Graeber’s assertion, we believe that well-managed policy can help to maximize welfare and efficiency in a world of resource constraints. No individual within society has full access to the information that could affect how he or she conducts affairs, whether individually or corporately.

As such, the policy-making elite must aspire to formulate and implement the programs that best approximate the sum of the allocation choices that each member of society would make if given knowledge of all relevant information. We appreciate both the enormous complexity of policy-making and the enormous need for rigorous and democratic public stewardship -- not least in a country as richly diverse as Malaysia, poised on the threshold of development but caught in numerous domestic and international challenges. As students who have spent time abroad but remain deeply committed to their homeland, we anticipate that the Malaysia Public Policy Competition 2011 will be a meaningful opportunity for us to learn more about the capacities and tradeoffs in policy-making today. Through stretching ourselves on the case scenarios, hearing from expert speakers and judges, and interacting with gifted peers and from different backgrounds, we hope to hone our senses of how our varied experiences, passions, competencies and academic training can contribute to the public policy landscape in Malaysia.


Want to see Team Building in action? Register for the Finals Round now!