BUKU Jalanan Chow Kit’s (BJCK) co-founder Siti Rahayu Baharin says she wants to emulate her own parents, while she and her team pave the way for a brighter future for the street children of Chow Kit.

She says her parents who still live in the family’s hometown in Megat Dewa, Kedah, were not highly educated, but had instilled a love for reading and learning among their children.

“They always said they do not have anything that they could give to me. The only thing that they could give to me was education,” the 38-year-old mother of one tells The Malaysian Insight.

Rahayu hopes that others would replicate BJCK’s model in their own towns or states.

“You don’t need a lot of money…you just need courage…willingness, you need the spirit of wanting to do this.”—September 1, 2019.