Transforming Communities Through Education: R.ED & Our Beginnings
Growing up as a refugee, education has always been the pinnacle focus of my life. Despite my parents' limited access to education in their times, they prioritised education for me and my siblings. Thanks to their dedication, I am the first person in my family, from both sides, to pursue tertiary education and graduate from a university. Today, I am proud to be pursuing a Master's in Global Diplomacy at the University of London. These achievements made me who I am today and gave me the confidence to thrive in our highly competitive society.
My first experience of volunteering started in my second year of university. Greatly troubled by the lack of access to education by refugee children, I decided to dedicate my time to volunteering at a small NGO called Myanmar Ethnic Women Refugee Organisation (MEWRO). They provided support to children who needed additional assistance with their homework with a weekly class. This program continued for a while, with a little break in between due to the pandemic and resumed after things got eased up.
In 2021, I graduated and got my first job at a local non-profit organisation. That's where I met Hilda, my co-founder of R.ED. She was one of the most wholesome people I have ever met and we became close in such a short time. I was still teaching and volunteering at MEWRO at the time. Knowing that she had some teaching experience, I asked if she would like to join me to teach the kids. We started volunteering together and discussed more about the different subjects and values we wanted to teach the kids. The whole process was very informal.
Unfortunately, we had no idea the programme would be ending very soon. When we found out, we just knew that there must be something we could do to continue this effort. So we made a decision to come up with a proper programme and structure for the kids and brainstormed our ideas, visions, and goals more in depth.
Project R.Ed: The Pilot Programme
Project R.ED was born out of all this brainstorming we did. We launched our first-ever pilot programme in 2022, with 8 committed volunteers teaching 5 subjects - Maths, English, Malay, Science, and Humanities. About 30 wonderful students attended our weekly classes for 6 months and this pilot programme was concluded with a small leadership camp for the kids with a mini-graduation ceremony at the end. The camp was the right way to end it; all the kids were dancing and having so much fun, and as the kids would say “the vibes were immaculate”.
At the end of our programme, we started collecting feedback about our programme and the satisfaction rates from the parents. One of the most commonly received feedback from the parents was that they wished their kids had access to extracurricular activities, such as music classes, sports or coding. They expressed that the community schools that their kids are attending could be more extensive in terms of providing these extracurricular activities,but sadly, had been facing a limited supply of teachers and resources. Our meetings with the school principals and community leaders confirmed this statement. We then started researching some ways to design these classes to cater to their needs. Based on this research, we came up with 3 main programmes in 2023: English Communication, Sustainability education, and Entrepreneurship.
From A Pilot To A Fully Established Organisation
Today, we have expanded from a team of 8 to over 40 volunteers. Looking back, I would have never imagined we would get this far, and I can confidently say that without our network friends and of volunteers believing in the work that we do, we would be nowhere near where we are now.
Drawing from my schooling experience, I firmly believe that extracurricular activities are crucial for a child's development. Solely prioritising academic aspects in education leads to stressed and unmotivated students and increases dropout rates. Not everyone excels academically; after all, each student possesses unique strengths. Traditional schools emphasise academic excellence, measuring success solely by grades. However, extracurricular activities hone students' soft skills, and strengths, and nurture confidence.
Ultimately, our aim is that the students, through our programmes, would know themselves better and be able to realise their full potential. We also want to help them understand that they should not feel unworthy or stupid just because they do not excel academically.
The Plan For 2024
In 2024, R.ED proudly presents four main programmes – BLOOM, our Montessori programme, and THRIVE, a subject themed around Global Citizenship, CODE, coding, and PLAY for sports. Paired with our three core student values – Resilience, Problem-Solving and Emotional Intelligence, we aim to mould our students and be as bulletproof as they can be wherever they may be in the future.
What's unique about our approach this year is that we pivoted from having our own classroom space to partnering up with an existing community school to support their students in their pursuit of education through alternative teaching. We believe this would be the most effective way of educating the students, even with the limited resources we have. This win-win approach was highly endorsed by the school principals and community school leaders as well.
As a start, we have partnered up with 2 schools; Destiny C3 Education Centre and Elom Initiatives. We are very excited going into the year with all the new students, teachers and volunteers involved. Working with this team has been such a pleasure and privilege, and I'm so grateful to have such a wonderful team.
From the bottom of my heart thank you all – Hilda, May, Deepa, Faris, Zin, Thet, Kelly, Rebekah, Sarah, Beatrice, Tien Sing, Zhen and Thanussha, and the rest of our volunteers for your hard work and dedication, and for believing in the work that we do at R.ED.
