Students Engagement Program

About Students Engagement Program

SEAOHUN Students Engagement Program encourages students across its member Universities to practice applying One Health concept and approach in addressing One Health issues. SEAOHUN organizes regional students’ activities where students across disciplines and countries can interact and develop technical and soft skills, including infectious diseases, zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance, communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking, all of which are essential to solving complex health challenges. These activities include producing posters, videos, and arts to raise awareness of One Health in their communities.

Program Objective

The Student Engagement Program aims to foster the young professionals from multidisciplinary background to learn and apply the One Health concept to stimulate the good practices in the communities.

In celebration of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) on 18 – 24 November 2022, SEAOHUN hosted its 3rd Annual Regional Student Competition with the theme of “Art to Communicate Antimicrobial Resistance”, in partnership with USAID One Health Workforce – Next Generation (OHW-NG) consortium, Zoetis and Pfizer. In this online art competition, undergraduate students from SEAOHUN member countries, entered as two member teams with the supervision of one faculty mentor to create digital and/or non-digital image art to communicate to non-scientific communities about the importance of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). Being the silent pandemic of this era and responsible for more than 700,000 deaths globally every year, the public needs to be more educated about AMR. Raising awareness with a touch of creativity, such as communication using Art is a great way to spread the awareness of AMR among the communities.

“Using Art is such amazing and fun idea to raise AMR awareness in creative way. The webinar also provided the knowledge and information of AMR and tips for drawing. I learned that messages conveyed in the form of art can educate the non-scientific community effectively and easily. Through this competition, I gained a lot of new experiences by working as a team, generating scientific ideas and converting into artwork.”

– Rachana Dorn, Whale Team, Cambodia

The competition was launched on 21st September 2022 and followed by a webinar titled “Communicating the Impact of AMR through Art” on 26th September 2022. The webinar was joined by interested students. The speakers from OHW-NG shared the overview of AMR and know-hows of science communications in the form of art. 47 teams (129 participants) from 7 SEAOHUN member countries participated in the competition: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam with a total submission of 58 art pieces.

The submitted art pieces were judged by One Health experts from SEAOHUN’s country networks and partner organizations based on scientific accuracy, One Health perspectives, meaningful communication, creativity and visual elements. Among the impressive knowledge blended creativities from the participants, 12 teams were crowned as the final winners of digital and non-digital art categories for their respective countries.

Winner of Non- Digital Arts

8_Philippines_NonDigital_Sinukuan Gazette Team 2.png

12_Vietnam_NonDigital_TBUMP ONE HEALTH CLUB.png

Winner of Digital Arts

The final winners’ art pieces were featured in SEAOHUN social media during WAAW and via public voting, non-digital art winning team from Vietnam “TBUMP One Health Club” won the Public Pick Award with 502 votes within 24 hours.

Student teams participated in this year’s competition proved that “A picture is worth a thousand words” by demonstrating their ability to create art in informative and engaging ways to educate the community. The competition enabled regional students to upgrade their technical knowledge and creative skills to communicate with the public regarding One Health issues while strengthening the networking and teamwork through collaboration. These accomplishments will foster the young professionals from multidisciplinary backgrounds to learn and apply the One Health concept to stimulate good practices in the communities.

SEAOHUN conveys heartfelt appreciation to our partners USAID, Zoetis and Pfizer for their valuable contribution for the success of SEAOHUN 2022 Regional Student Competition.

“The competition was such a unique approach to spread awareness by creativity. It was never easy to educate people about health issues by just telling information. Art is a good way to attract people in giving the health messages where they can absorb the information easily. Public health professionals should also think about more flexible and creative ideas in spreading health education and awareness to the community.”

– Abdul Latiff Bin Sabri, Kaizen Team, Malaysia

Our History of Successful
Regional Students Competitions

2021

For the second year, “SEAOHUN 2021 Regional Students’ Competition: Risk of Zoonotic Diseases” was held with the aim to foster the young professionals from multidisciplinary background to learn and apply the One Health concept to stimulate the good practices in the communities. This competition was funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Chevron as a co-sponsor. This competition acted as an opportunity for the students of SEAOHUN member countries to utilize their creative skills (soft skill) and technical knowledge (hard skill) to communicate to the public about the risk of Zoonotic diseases. Over 200 students joined with 52 submissions received from seven SEAOHUN member countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). The competition ended up with achieving one award per country and recognized six runners up, yielding so many interesting and well-made entries with a very successful public selection.

“I'm so very happy to join the SEAOHUN in the video competition, that was a new experience for me to create the video for raising awareness for people to understand the Risk of Zoonotic Disease… my team members [and I] learned a lot from making the video, especially about teamwork… we always motivate each other and keep working together during the pandemic. Finally, I thank you for creating this program that is an opportunity for youth to learn from each other and we contribute to helping our society or community.” -

A student who joined the SEAOHUN 2021 Regional Students’ Competition

2020

In 2020, there was poster and video competition of “Covid-19 Digital Awareness Challenge” aimed at engaging Southeast Asian students in educating their communities about COVID-19 and promoting risk-reducing behavior through digital platforms. The activity was supported by the USAID One Health Workforce Next Generation (OHW-NG) project. Over 200 students across six Southeast Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) submitted 110 posters, flyers, and videos to raise awareness of their communities on COVID-19. From there, 4 winners; 2 for videos and 2 for posters were identified who created the best original, creative and informative products.