SCBWI in Malaysia is now a registered non-profit organisation in Malaysia!

As a registered socieity, we are required to have at least 7 committee members from different states in Malaysia. Our Secretary, Rafilda Abdul Rahman, is now busy working on our membership drive while another committee member, Mischele Maniam is busy getting our website up.

We are excited (and will be busy) because come April, we will be holding an exhibition of illustrations by our members. The exhibition is sponsored by the Malaysian Book Council in conjunction with the 30th Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair (22 April - 1 May). The fair attracts more than a million visitors every year and exceeded the two million mark last year. We hope the illustration exhibition will also be a key attraction.

We are also working with the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) for the Asian Festival of Children's Content to be held from 26-28 May in Singapore. This is the second year that the Festival has been held and SCBWI members and RAs/ ARAs were involved as speakers and panelists last year. This year, we are expecting Lin and Steve and SCBWI will play an even greater role.

In conjunction with AFCC, SCBWI in Malaysia is also helping to organise a workshop on preparing picture books in Malay/Indonesian. Workshop leaders are Yusof Gajah (mentor of SCBWI-Malaysia) and Murti Bunanta (Indonesian Board on Books for Young People).

SCBWI (Malaysia) and SCBWI (Singapore) will also be collaborating with NBDCS for the Malaysia-Singapore Student Picture Book Illustration Award. This is the first time the Award is held and it is expected that it will be opened to more countries in future.