Rebranding of Thoughts and Action

EWRF which has been in existence for about three (3) decades. It has seen the development of different stages of Indian community development. It has seen the challenging times faced by the Indian community as a result of rural-urban migration, with the development. The last thirty (30) years have been the toughest time for the Indians. No one would deny the fact that we have been marginalised to an extent our presence become irrelevant.

As an NGO, EWRF has played its role. Looking back one would think we could have played a greater role in shaping the community.But the fact remains EWRF is a voluntary organisation which is funded solely by private donations. The membership of EWRF is an ageing one. At least 90% of the members are more than sixty (60) years of age.

We must remember that we have moved from cyclostyling to desktop printing; telegrams to e-mails and sms; telephones to hand-phones and the likes. We must understand that the children in lower secondary are falling in love, leave alone talking about love, which was sometimes unthinkable in the 70’s and 80’s. The greatest task that confronts us now is how are we going to make ourselves RELEVANT.

In order to make ourselves relevant, we must rebrand EWRF. Even in our political scenes we can feel and notice the rebranding of Parti Alternatif into a multiracial and multicultural outfit to attract the younger section of the community. The astounding victory achieved by Parti Kaedilan Rakyat, Democratic Action Party and Parti Islam Malaysia is a clear indication of the future direction.

I have thought of few things that must be done to rebrand ourselves. They are:-

• Let us move from welfare based organisation to an organisation which empowers the community.
• Establishing closer working relationship with other NGO’s like CHILD, Tamil Foudation, Hindu Sangam and hundreds of smaller NGO’s
• Let us reach out to secondary school children. Mould them to lead EWRF branches in next ten (10) years. To achieve this establishing Junior EWRF clubs are vital.
• Let us spend considerable amount of our resources in carrying our research activities and prepare papers with actions plan for the future.

Maybe we should spend sometime during our Annual Delegates Conference (date, time and venue to be decided soon) to discuss and bring out a blue print for next five years.

Thank you.

S.Pasupathi
President