Championing Equalities Amongst Refugees

The Story

Hello, we are Chelsea, Khalif and Debbie who have decided to leave our comfort zones by joining AIESEC in Sunway as the Malaysian Youth Volunteers !!! The programme that we join is “Empowering Equalities 11.0”, which is aligned to Sustainable Development Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and concentrates on raising the Malaysians’ consciousness about asylum seekers and refugee children.

  Three of us previously engaged in a private discussion about the refugee issue before by sharing our own experiences and reflections on it. We are really heartbroken after being acknowledged by our programme’s Organising Committee Team that there are at least 181510 asylum seekers and refugees who have registered under UNHCR Malaysia. We could not fathom the agony of being forced to leave our own hometowns, where we have spent our daily lives all the time, because of war and repression. Most importantly, what is even sadder is the fact that refugee children in Malaysia are unable to enrol in our nation’s education system, which indicates that they have lost their rights as a human to learn about the world and values that sustain their lives.

  Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of light for the refugee children of Malaysia in this circumstance. The Zotung Refugee Catholic Learning Centre in Kuala Lumpur has played an important role in providing life skills and education to the refugee children between 3 years old to 15 years old. We rejoice that this learning centre is able to recognise the needs of refugee children by helping them to engage with the society from the marginalised community perspective. The life skills that will be taught are very vital since the refugee children are humans just like us. Hence, the mission of this learning centre enables them to “live” and not just “survive” in this society.

  According to our own experiences, we noticed that there are a lot of harmful, derogatory and stereotypical comments by the netizens on social media platforms which target the asylum seekers and refugee children. The structural xenophobia in Malaysia has affected many Malaysians to lack of comprehension in this issue and thus causing the refugee children difficulty to receive resources in this environment. For instance, the Zotung Refugee Catholic Learning Centre is tough to sustain their organisation to deliver the educational resources as there are several challenges existing. One of the biggest obstacles is lacking funding to uphold the safe space for refugee children.

  Therefore, we sincerely invite you to create an impact on this programme! Even a little bit is enough as we trust that a small amount already makes a difference! Also, good karma always works after doing good deeds for others and we genuinely appreciate your good deeds. Please donate within your limits and do not go beyond it as we do not mean to burden you. Thank you for reading through this.