KUALA LUMPUR, 24 JUNE 2021 – The Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) Championship Malaysia 2021 is back with a bang as they introduce a new additional award – the ‘Anugerah Perdana’, in which YABhg. Tun Dr. Mahathir will be selecting his favorite artwork from the competition to receive the prestigious award. The Befrienders KL (NGO), a beneficiary of the ACA Championship Malaysia 2021, has set the theme for this year’s competition to raise awareness on suicide prevention.
Despite the Full MCO and the challenges that it brings, the Creative Cloud Community (CCC) organized the competition entirely through digital means. What would usually require all the contestants to gather in a hall to complete their designs in an 8-hour period was accomplished by using a digital group-chatting platform in which the ACA Examiners monitored the contestants’ work through a Livestream.
The Befrienders KL chose the theme – “Where There’s Life, There’s Hope” for this year’s competition, to raise awareness on suicide prevention, especially for the younger generation in Malaysia. With suicidal cases on the rise in Malaysia during the pandemic, it is a very important topic to touch on. According to the Befrienders KL, the calls that they have received have almost doubled during this pandemic. The ACA Championship Malaysia 2021 was happy to bring light to this matter and educate the public to look out for their loved ones.
The Grand Finale of the ACA Championship Malaysia 2021 took place on Facebook Live, where they revealed the top three (3) contestants that will represent Malaysia in the international competition – the ACA World Championships. Present to show their support at the Grand Finale were Government Bodies – Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) & Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC); and sponsors – Hewlett-Packard (HP) & Lemonsky.
Top 3 Winners of the ACA Championship Malaysia 2021
| # | NAME | INSTITUTE |
| 1 | Teo Sze Ting | Tunku Abdul Rahman University College |
| 2 | Tan Jia Yi | University Malaya |
| 3 | Nur Nadirah Binti Razali | Swinburne University of Technology |
| 4 | Imran Syafiq Bin Mohd Zin | Universiti Teknologi MARA – Puncak Alam |
| 5 | Chong Shu Yao | Han Chiang University |
| 6 | Yoon Yin Khoo | Saito University College |
| 7 | Loh Jye Jinn | Equator College – Penang |
| 8 | Nico Wynn | IACT College |
| 9 | Ong Voon Li | UOW Malaysia KDU University College |
| 10 | Ahmad Syakir Ilman Bin Rosdan | Politeknik Ungku Omar |
“Congratulations to the top 3 winners, your outstanding work has paid off, and it has certainly impressed me. I am delighted that I am able to play my part in enabling these young talents to expose themselves internationally. The ACA certification is a globally recognized credential that grants the holder an upper hand in job interviews. With that, we intend to boost the employment rates in Malaysia by increasing the chances of employability for all our candidates, especially during these troubling times,” said Natalie Sit, Founder of CCC.
It has always been the ACA Championship Malaysia’s goal to empower youths; this year, they took it a step further by introducing an additional award, the Anugerah Perdana, to motivate and drive the contestants to give it their all. After carefully examining all the designs from the Top 30 contestants, YABhg. Tun Dr. Mahathir selected Imran Syafiq Bin Mohd Zin’s (Universiti Teknologi MARA – Puncak Alam) artwork to receive the Anugerah Perdana. He claimed that the decision behind choosing Imran’s design was because it clearly portrays the competition’s theme and illustrates the message of suicide prevention.
YABhg. Tun Dr. Mahathir said, “I would like to thank the organizers and all present for inviting me and giving such an honor to share some thoughts and even give away an award. I take this opportunity to congratulate all finalists. It is indeed a very difficult task to choose one from all the submissions as they were really impressive and captured the essence of the campaign’s theme, ‘Where There’s Life, There’s Hope’. For the first time in the ACA Championship Malaysia, there is a new award, the Anugerah Perdana, that was introduced to further motivate and encourage our talents. I wish to remind all young Malaysians that there is no shortcut to success. Hold on to your values and remember – you are our hope for the future.”
