We were requested to quote for this project in August 2010 and after 2 months of anticipation, we were called to meet with the client from AGFund to pitch our ideas and fine tune our ideas. They wanted the tiniest details discussed and they did this with all the event planners they met here during their first short 2-day visit to Kuala Lumpur. All we knew then was that most hotels were fully booked and we only one venue left that fit the bill- the KL Convention Centre
When they left for Riyadh, we were then asked to give several more ideas before they would make their decision two weeks later. Needless to say, our suppliers were on their wits end trying to get a confirmation before starting on the project.
Finally, we received the much awaited green light and before we knew it we had only two weeks left to complete staging, negotiations with the venue and other vendors. We worked with designers to come up with new stage and backdrop designs and we only got the go ahead 3 days before the 3-day event when the AGFund arrived from Riyadh!
Needless to say, all other projects took a temporary back seat while we dived headfirst into this one. We spent many anxious filled nights at the Secretariat room at The Traders Hotel going over programmes, artwork, event crew schedules, logistics making sure nothing was left out. After all, HRH Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, the President of AGFund and our own PM, YAB Dato' Sri Najib Bin Abdul Razak were going to grace the event!
At last, the first day of the event started off with the Briefing and Press Conference and the journalists found out that HRH Prince Talal was unwell and had sent his son, HRH Prince Turky Bin Talal instead. Ah, but a Prince is still a Prince!
The Briefing and Press Conference covered the AGFund concept specifically targetted for the knowledge of our local NGOs who turned up in droves.
The second day was more for the 12th Prize Committee and more foreign journalists who were specially flown in to cover the event. This is when the 2010 project winners are announced.
And the third day, the grandest of them all, was the AGFund Award Ceremony dinner where the three 2009 prize winners were given awards. The AGFUND Prize is given annually in a city selected as per specific criteria approved by the Prize Committee which includes high-profile personalities representing the various regions of the world. So far, the Prize award ceremony was held in Geneva, Paris, New Delhi, Tunis, Cape Town, Warsaw, Buenos Aires and Istanbul. Kuala Lumpur will be the ninth station within 11 years ever since the Prize has been launched on 1999. The "Prize Station" is selected as per specific criteria approved by the Prize Committee.
The Prize of the Arab Gulf Program for United Nations Development Organizations is an extension of AGFUND approach in concentrating developmental performance and supporting the cornerstones of development in order to realize the target of sustainability and investment in man.
We are happy to report that despite undergoing a challenging two weeks, the event went on without any untoward incident and was even praised as the best award ceremony AGFund has ever had!
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