VOLUNTEERS are holding classes for refugee kids in the Klang Valley.

The classes are provided by Project R.ED, which stands for Refugee Education, co-founded by Hilda Paviter, 27, and launched in March.

Hilda told The Malaysian Insight that the initiative had about 10 teachers and 35 refugee students aged seven to 13.

“The teachers are basically the result of a call for volunteers on social media. Some of them are people I know, others are mutual friends. 

“Some of them have no teaching experience, but we all share one thing in common – a heart for the kids and a sense of why this is important,” she said.

Project R.ED teaches four subjects: Bahasa Melayu, Maths, Science and, Humanities.

She said that she believes every child deserves to have access for education.

“Although my co-founder and I may have already left the public education system, we believe every child deserves access to quality education.

“I love being in the classroom with the students and I found that joy again when I started volunteering in 2021. But what does a quality education look like? That is something that we are trying to build on,” she said.

According to her, refugee children in Malaysia are denied access to formal education.

“Although my students do go to community schools, we wanted to build a space where they were allowed to explore and learn more about themselves and the world around them.”

She added that the parents have been very thankful for the programme.

“It was also not until last week when I had to walk some of them home that I realised that they actually did not live nearby and that they had to walk quite a distance to get to class.

“This really helped me see that they saw value in the programme and were willing to walk all the way to send their kids for classes and come back two hours later to pick them up,” she said.

However, Hilda said the current project is a pilot program and it will only be running for six months.

“We hope to learn and understand what works and what does not and after the six months, we hope to evaluate all the collected learning and restructure the next programme to be better.

“I feel that if we can come up with a structure of a programme that is beneficial for them then I would love to replicate it for other refugee communities.

“I do think that every community has different needs and so what a learning programme, or the subjects that we focus on will differ from different communities,” said Hilda

 She said the project was funded by personal donations.

“I hold a fundraiser at the start of the programme with a transparency sheet for all our expenses and how the money is spent.

“This was done on my personal Instagram and Twitter accounts. We got 65% of our targeted budget for the whole programme,” she said.

She welcomed donations from the public. 

According to UNHCR, Malaysia hosts some 181,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, 85% of whom are from Myanmar, including 103,000 Rohingya. 

Others are from 50 other countries, including Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. – May 12, 2022.