Instilling Leadership While Improving Communities

Mark Julex was a Shell scholar who has had the opportunity to join the Assessed Internship programme and is now undergoing the Shell Graduate Programme as a Graduate Process Engineer.

Within a year of joining Shell, he has been involved in various projects that helped with his career and personal development, as well as projects that bring the company’s CSR promises to life.

“The moment you join Shell, you really just hit the ground running, and that means you become immediately responsible for all the work and projects that come your way”, said Mark.

One of those projects is Shell Selamat Sampai, a comprehensive road safety movement to increase road safety awareness and encourage behavioural change among motorcyclists and youth.

As part of the movement, Mark was tasked with being a project mentor at a local school. Besides mentoring 20 students who were part of the initiative, he and the team also helped the school to identify the causes to the traffic problems they had been facing. Over almost five months, Mark dedicated time to conducting weekly meetings at the school and worked diligently to rectify the traffic congestion being faced.

“We organised events with the traffic police and approached the city council to request for a zebra crossing in front of the school. This also helped the primary school next to us because the council decided to install a zebra crossing there too!” Mark exclaimed.

He further explained how the success and longevity of the programme would be ensured. “We appointed road prefects to enforce the usage of the zebra crossings. This helped expose the students to leadership skills and gave them the sense of responsibility towards their friends and families too.”

The outcome from the efforts of Mark and his #ShellSelamatSampai team? It now takes only five to 10 minutes to clear traffic outside the school, which is a huge improvement over the 40 minutes it would previously take.