Creating An Inclusive World

The Story

Who are we? 

Hi! We are Yun Jing and Jananii from AIESEC in Sunway. We are volunteers in the Empowering Equalities program.

What is AIESEC / the Empowering Equalities program?

AIESEC: We are an international youth-run philanthropic organization that runs social projects based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) proposed by the United Nations to tackle prevalent social issues around the globe.

Empowering Equalities (EE): Empowering Equalities is a project that aims to integrate and promote inclusivity of the refugee community socially by establishing and fostering their learning opportunities.

What do we do? 

We are a group of passionate youth that aims to create an inclusive world by bridging the gap between the refugee community and society. Through the EE programme, we aim to provide voluntary support and spread awareness regarding the refugee community in Malaysia. 

Through your support and donations, we will be able to provide financial aid in sustaining the activities of the refugees learning centres dedicated to empowering and improving the livelihood of the refugees here.

Why should you care? 

“Giving to those in need will bring more joy than money could ever buy.” 

Dave Ramsey

Life can be harsh and unfair sometimes. Though every one of us may walk different paths in life, I think most of us can agree that life is not just all rainbows and sunshine; we all have our respective gloomy, rainy periods in our life. However, some people just seem to suffer more than others. During these depressing times, don’t you ever wish deep down that someone would just come by and offer you an umbrella — to make life just a slight bit more bearable.

Some things in life are simply out of our control; things such as where we are born and our ethnicities are all left up to the whims of fate. Things that happen to a country are all due to the whims of prominent politicians and governments. Yet, ordinary citizens are usually the ones to bear the consequences. For instance, refugees and asylum seekers have fled their countries in fear of persecution to seek refuge in another country, to no fault of their own.

Instead of discriminating against such people for things that were simply out of their hands, should we not instead aim to work together with them to recover the future that was seized from them? Though we may don varying appearances and come from different countries, are our hearts still not unified together as part of the same human species?

“What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love”

Henri Nouwen

Myanmar, Pakistan, Palestine and Iraq. These are just some of the countries that its citizens have fled for their lives to avoid persecution and war. As of the end of June 2021, there are roughly 179,550 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR Malaysia. That is 179,550 innocent lives that want nothing more than to have safety and stability. Instead, they are forced to flee from what they were so used to into unfamiliar territories. About 68% of the refugees are men and 32% are women. There are also approximately 45900 children that are below the age of 18! 

The pandemic has disrupted the lives of many, the refugees are among the communities that have been hit hard by it. Due to the lack of laws regarding the refugee community in Malaysia, they have been facing many losses, one of them being their access to education becoming greatly limited. Refugee children are unable to enrol in public schools and therefore mostly depend on learning centres to receive an education. However, the pandemic that struck left many people struggling to get back on their feet. The learning centres are no strangers to the hardship the pandemic has left and some are left struggling financially trying to provide the children with the proper education they deserve. This is why we need YOUR help. A small donation will greatly aid the learning centres in providing a better education for the refugee children and therefore indirectly ensuring they have a brighter future.

 Sometimes, all it takes to transform someone’s life is a little act of kindness. Strangers or not, we are all the same humans that roam this beautiful planet of ours.

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” 

Gandhi