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International Women’s Day is celebrated globally on 8th March. It is a prestigious event that has been around for more than a century.

Women’s Day is a special day at iCar Asia because we have 62 amazing female champions, 13 of them are in the management role – and they are all rocking it. Women can lead, inspire and deliver and iCar Asia is no exception. Also, women love cars too.

There is a complete gender equality at iCar Asia. In order to celebrate and recognize the achievements of women, we celebrate Women’s Day with fervor. iCar Asia also gives a shout out to men who gave support along the way! 

To commemorate the occasion, and to raise awareness about women’s plights, iCar Asia invited the honorable Mr. Kelvin Ang, Community Engagement Officer of Women Aid Organization. Mr. Ang delivered an enlightening talk on “Recognizing Domestic Violence and What to Do About It”.

During the talk, Mr. Ang made a point that not everyone can identify domestic violence’s root cause as it can be an influence from an abusive family environment – thus, becoming a norm for both the abused and abuser.

The premise of talk was domestic abuse according to female perspective. Mr. Ang highlighted that if the male partner has caused damage to the female; caused her to fear, raised his voice, beating or even controlling her life, these are signs of domestic violence.

He sent a message across and asked iCar Asia’s team to spread it as much as possible. He said that any sufferer of domestic abuse should not shy away from contacting WAO (Women Aid Organization) for help. The hotline and WhatsApp numbers are always open (details provided at the end of the article).

WAO needs an annual cost of RM 1.8 million to support its entire operations, shelters, consulting help, professional services and such. To support this noble cause, iCar Asia ran a fundraising campaign amongst all the employees.  

Since our company culture is Purpose with Passion, we always like to inject some fun at the workplace. For this, iCar Asia has made a collaboration with Benefit Malaysia to run internal activities with the employees.

There were incredibly fun activities such as Treasure Hunt session amongst the employees. iCar Asia gifted out 5 Benefit’s door gifts (worth RM60) to the winners of the hunt. Best part: treasures were hidden in the office area, but very cleverly hidden, it took some effort to find them.

Benefit Malaysia also ran another fun activity with iCar Asia on Women’s Day. The employees who participated uploaded their best photos with captions and slogans related to women empowerment on the Instagram. The top three photos with most likes won exciting prizes.

Benefit Malaysia has also sponsored the products worth up to RM1000 for our internal Instagram’s contest from 8th March 2018 to 15th March 2018, employees who are keen to participate are required to upload their best photo and women empowerment slogan and the top 3 photos with the most likes can get the chance to win the exciting prizes.

It was a moment of pride for me to see participants from all departments engaging in the very important activities on a very prestigious day. Everybody was pumped up. Three outstanding ladies won more than 700 likes on Instagram.

Winners of Instagram contest – Left: Hamizah, Middle: Boey Chiu, Right: Amanda

And I am proud to say that iCar has successfully raised total fund of RM1,104 to support WAO in provides shelter, telephone counselling, face to face counselling and asssiatnce to over 1,500 women.

At the end, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Benefit Malaysia and Hermo for supporting the event and to Kelvin Ang from Women’s Aid Organization (WAO) for making this year’s Women’s Day memorable.

Not forgetting the invisible magicians, people behind the curtain, the team who initiated, planned, organized, working through few sleepless nights to make this event a great success.

Check out a short video of the celebration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=110NoS-kojg

If you need any assistance regarding Domestic Violence, please contact:

Woman Aid Organization (WAO) Malaysia

Website: http://www.wao.org.my/

Hotline: 03 7956 3488

WhatsApp/SMS: 018 988 8058