Idaman Tea: How 3 Malaysian Students & Teachers Made An Award-Winning Tea From Traditional Remedies
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Three 11-year-old students from SK Kampung Idaman, together with 3 teachers, has done the country proud by bagging the gold medal for school students at the Intellectual Property, Invention, Innovation and Technology Exposition 2020 in Bangkok. Now, they’re preparing their award-winning tea for sale.
For the expo, the team of 3 students and 3 teachers prepared a special brew of herbal tea using 95% guava leaves and 5% mint leaves to produce a natural plant-based curative for diarrhea. The end result was powdered sun-dried leaves packed into sachets made of pineapple fibre, a 100% natural product named Idaman Tea.
(Credit: GPSBestari)
11-year-olds Mohamad Khairy Faris Afandey, Nidal Eiman Erwin, and Muhammad Aqil Yahya worked closely with their teachers Danial Heryanto Zainal Abidin, Mohd Norhizal Ramlee, and Shahrizal Mohd Azain to work on the invention, which had been in experimental stages since February last year.
Teacher Danial Heryanto noted that his colleague Mohd Norhizal was the one to suggest researching traditional remedies using natural resources, recommended by the older generation to cure their ailments.
That’s when they decided to experiment with various plant leaves to study their curative properties. During this time, the young students were experimenting with plenty of other natural plants, such as pandan, and suggesting alternatives such as corn or sugarcane fibre to make the sachets.
Once they had a product innovative enough to participate in the expo, the three students had to present the new innovation to the jury and guests to a large international crowd in the English language. Eventually, their hard work paid off, and they beat over 2,000 teams from 14 countries to win the I-New Gen Award, being the sole Malaysian team to win an award.
It was the first time they were participating in such an event and they had to present their product in English which they did with full confidence. It’s obvious they have a deep interest in the field of inventions and science.
Teacher Mohd Norhizal to Bernama
Team leader Danial Heryanto said that they have full confidence in their tea and are now in the process of registering Idaman Tea with the Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO).
They’re hoping to commercialise the tea once the IP is ready, so it may not take long for us to be able to buy our own packets of Idaman Tea invented, produced, and sold right in our Malaysian markets!
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