Category: CEO Messages

بِسْــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِالرَّحْمَنِ اارَّحِيم

Alhamdulillah.

I hope our children had progressed and enjoyed the learning activities at CIC and it will be a wonderful experience of a lifetime.

And Alhamdulilah we are now in the month of Hajj, the month of blessings. Last week, children at CIC started performing the play on wukuf, setting the tents in the classroom, reading khutbah and doa. Last year they performed the play “Safari to Makkah”. These were among the many exciting things we did at CIC. To the children, it is the excitement that they will not forget, but to us, it is the knowledge and values that we want to instill in them.

Education in early childhood is more than teaching to read but to develop the innate belief. My son once told me, “Mummy, do you know that the scariest month is October?” I asked why. He said because of Halloween! So Halloween is one of the examples on how the English culture has become part of my son’s belief which I cannot control. In this 21st century, the knowledge are unlimited, the global influences to some extent are good but can be harmful if we do not balance it with the religious beliefs.

Dear parents, our children are like the empty glass, their childhood experience and belief will characterize themselves. Therefore as parents and educators we must pay close attention to the daily experience of a child so that we are able to intervene before it is too late.

It is important for a Muslim child to be upbringing in good environment but for developing a strong character, the kid should be toughened up. This is normally happened to many great leaders of the world who were sent away from families to make them tough.

The Hajj itself is the training camp of Allah that He has made it compulsory to all Muslims. We see that Allah has placed His sacred house, Kaabah in the most rugged stony part of the earth and commanded the people to turn our attention towards it. Allah had not placed His Sacred house in the lush gardens with streams because of the lightness of the trial. As a matter of great test, extreme trial, Allah has made us throw away our good dress, with only pieces of cloth, uncut hair, dusted faces in order to approach Him. Allah tries us by means of different troubles and He wants us to render worship through hardships to extract arrogance and to settle humbleness in our spirits. When people remain humble before Allah only then they will accept His obedience with sincerity.

Certainly, we should take a lesson from this training camp of Allah. If we want our children to be selected individuals, sometimes we have to engage them in tough situations so that they will grow with strong leadership capabilities but remain humble in front of God.

Lastly, I really hope if we can continuously work hands in hands to develop our young leaders. In February 2011, in celebration of Maulidur Rasul, CIC will have an education conference which we will discuss few important issues in children’s education. I like to invite all of you to join us. We are playing a very important role in human history, what we do today, helps to shape the future. Therefore, hope to see you in that conference. Insya Allah.

With that, I thank you.

BismillahiArRahmaniArRahim

Thank you for coming to this small ceremony. I always appreciate your supports to CIC in whatever ways that all of you always give. May Allah consistently guide us to the right path.

This year CIC is 12 years old. Alhamdulilah with all the supports from you and the people like you, CIC continue to be stronger. As our brand is well accepted we start to receive attacks from those who may not like us to be around. I found that one or two persons start to propagate that our English program is not good because the teacher speaks Kelantan’s accent. Even though to me nothing is wrong with the Kelantan’s accent as Britons, Americans, Australians also differ in accent and many of the successful people speak Kelantan’s English, believe me, none of our children read Kelantan’s English because they learn from Kelantanese teacher.

They also spread that we cook for our children using Ajinomoto which is totally not true. Let me tell you, you do not send your children at CIC for English Language only because CIC is not a language centre. But you send your children to CIC for an integrated education which I believe is the best foundation for your children’s education. And I also believe that at CIC your children never lose the English Language as they can read and write well in English. But they have the advantage of learning Quran and have learned to worship Allah very well at their early stage of life.

Nowadays majority of our people are in easy circumstances because of the advancement of technology, education and monetary status but regretfully the morals and spiritual values are disappearing among them. It can easily be said that so many crimes, murders, suicides, intentional accidents which occurred are frequently resulted from immorality and irreligiousness.

Therefore our children need not only basic education on religion but most importantly they must believe and apply it. Religion is for us to apply throughout our lives so that we are safe and other people are also safe from our ill doings till the day we depart from this physical world.

Many people know the knowledge but somehow do not embrace it. It is even more difficult to worship Allah. For that, we must train ourselves to worship Allah as the act of worshipping needs training. Worshipping Allah starts from birth even before actually. We should be grateful to Allah for choosing Mu’minin parents from whom we get Islam and practise it. The same goes with our children nowadays, they are grateful to have you as their parents.

Frankly, I am sad when I found out here children being grown up by parents who themselves are lost in this physical world, forgetting the purpose of life, and they do not realise that what they think as good for their children in long term is harmful. Some parents are very trendy. They give reactions to certain trends in the business world and tend to forget the principle actions that they must do. For example, when it was IT trend, many kindergartens offered learning computer without thinking deeply on its harms or the needs of having it. When some friends send their children to Chinese school because it offers Mandarin classes, we start to react to that and want to send our children too. Well, to some people, it is a proud sending to Mandarin Medium as it is more expensive even comparing to the English Medium.

I am not saying that learning Mandarin is not good, but I am questioning on its effectiveness if you send your child for only a year. Would in a year, your child can wrap up everything for being able to understand and use the Mandarin language when he grows up. I believe that it is totally not effective unless we continue to make him learned in Chinese school for years. You can send your children to Chinese school for 6 years if you really want him to learn Mandarin. But usually life is about choice. Once you get one thing you might have to forgo the other. Our children might lose other more important things that we need to give them as a strong foundation i.e. the spiritual wellbeing. However there is good option if there were Chinese school that can give good religious education and decent environment, besides need to ensure that the teachers are the Murabbi who himself walks his teachings.

That is among the important advice that I continuously tell to CIC’s staffs, that we must always act towards our goals not to react to certain circumstances. Some of our staffs also tend to react to external factors that sometimes we cannot keep them working with us for long term. In fact it is our national problem because very often local staffs especially Malays do not want to take more challenges, they have many choices around and are comfortable at their zone. Therefore we can find many businesses overcome this problem by importing staffs from countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh.

It is not easy to manage children’s centre like CIC. Due to the fact that it is service and labor intensive oriented, CIC’s requirements is high. We cannot simply employstaffs who are able to teach English only because we need them to know Quran and Islamic knowledge as well. Besides we need them to be the Murabbi,the roll models and transmit the spiritual aura to our children.

Currently, we have a manual system that is consistently and frequently monitoring the quality and the progress of our children. We are monitoring closely the quality and performance of our staffs according to our standard of KPIs whether they are new or experienced staffs.

Extending that, I am proud to tell you that we are now developing our IT based system, that cost more than RM30,000 to manage the performance of our centre. This system will tell what to do daily on a particular child, in term of his schedule, subject to teach, how to teach, what book to be used and what assessment to use. Our staffs who will be monitored by our quality controller, will just have to follow the instructions and updating reports. With this system, I hope students produced by CIC will continue to be more excellent. Lastly, I also like to share with you that we are now been granted the status of franchisor by MECD. If anyone of you or your relatives or your friends like to own a CIC, please let us know. The preparation for 2010’s intakes should begin now as the franchisee needs to undergo process of selections as well as proper trainings

With that, I thank you. Please do not forget to put CIC’s sticker on your car to show your supports to us. I pray that Allah will bless us and the way to the hereafter through this world life is prosperous always. Wassalam

Hjh. Qutreen Nada Ahmad