Sabah and Sarawak are home to numerous indigenous communities, each of which has a rich tradition of folktales. These have been narrated and passed down generation to generation, literally through the spoken word. Because folktales are essentially oral, most of them have not been captured and documented. This means, as the oral tradition disappears, so too will the stories that have entertained and educated East Malaysia’s indigenous communities for centuries.

Realising this, Warisan Global – a Kuala Lumpur-based project management organisation that aims to catalyse social innovations – decided to preserve folktales and share these charming stories in cyberspace.Apart from carrying out corporate responsibility work for clients, Warisan Global identifies social courses which require positive intervention that it can undertake itself. With its own money, and along the philosophy of ‘doing a lot more with a lot less’, the company manages and runs some of these projects to positively impact the target communities it serves.

The Sabah and Sarawak Folktale Competition is one such project. Initiated in 2006 in Sarawak as a pilot project, the team received 10 folktales from the districts of Kapit, Mukah and Miri in four languages (Kayan, Kelabit, Iban and Malay). These stories were edited, translated and compiled into a trilingual compilation – in the original indigenous language, English and Bahasa. The translations were done by experts in indigenous languages in collaboration with Pustaka Negeri Sarawak (PNS). All the stories and their translations were then uploaded onto www.warisanglobal.com and PNS’ website, where they can be accessed.

Although only 10 stories were received from the pilot project, the team did not give up. They ran the folktale competition again in 2008, and garnered better response. Thirty-five teams submitted 51 stories in nine indigenous Sarawak languages which Warisan Global is in the process of compiling in the trilingual format.

In 2008, too, this CSR programme was extended to Sabah, in collaboration with Pustaka Negeri Sabah (SSL). The inaugural Sabah Folktale Writing Competition attracted 19 entries in three languages (Kadazandusun, Rungus and Bajau). Judging has been completed and the next step is to compile the trilingual compilation of the winning stories.

The competition targets all sectors of the communities of Sarawak and Sabah. In order to enter, participants are required to form a group involving elders and, together, write the folktales that the elders can remember (the use of ICT in writing is encouraged). Each story is to be written in the original native language together with an English or Bahasa translation. The groups are then required to compile their story or stories into a scrapbook, with illustrations, and submit this to the nearest library.

Over and above receiving lovely illustrated folktales, Warisan Global was encouraged by the fact that the process of compiling the stories brought generations within families together, thus helping to bridge the generation gap. From the success of this endeavour, Warisan Global intends to take the folktale competition national, and a new website www.myfolktales.net is being developed for this.

The decision to start with indigenous communities in Sabah and Sarawak was based on the fact that many of these ethnic groups live in isolated locations. Through this competition, they are brought into mainstream Malaysia and especially in local cyberspace content development. Further, publishing the stories of these indigenous communities on the Web ensures they are available in a public domain and sustained in the long term.