The “strawberry generation,” representing today’s youth, is often observed to have deficiencies in interpersonal skills such as active listening, teamwork, responsibility, reliability, leadership, motivation, patience, and empathy. This highlights the need to foster self-development among young people by enhancing these interpersonal skills, including effective communication and collaboration, to better shape their future and enable them to contribute meaningfully to society. Interestingly, the Centre for Foundation Studies in Science at Universiti Malaya (PASUM) offers a mandatory ‘Jati Diri’ course in addition to science and mathematics courses. This course is conducted for 2 h a week. In addition to delivering knowledge on course content, we also conduct activities that use a student-centered, and interactive approach to develop soft skills related to each topic. One of the activities involves each group creating a short story using individual Japanese origami folds. The activity aims to integrate creative and interpersonal skills through hands-on experience. The focus was on interpersonal skills includes communication, teamwork, and time management as students work within a timeframe. These skills were covered in the previous lecture. In the first 30 min, the instructor presents content on creative and critical thinking. Students then have 60 min to complete their origami folds and create their story. The remaining time is used for presentations (both face-to-face and online). Padlet is used to upload written work or videos up to 3 min for those not presenting physically. At the end of the session, the instructor provides feedback on the students’ work. Students have been observed to demonstrate effective teamwork, time management, and creative thinking. Most of them enjoyed the process, providing positive feedback via Padlet. We can conclude that this activity successfully enhanced students’ soft skills (communication, critical and creative thinking, teamwork, time management) and indirectly improved their use of technology in creating videos and giving feedback. This offers valuable insights into making the ‘Jati Diri’ course module more dynamic and engaging in fostering students’ self-awareness. Future studies could explore the impact of such activities on various student demographics, including differences in age, background, or field of study.