World Vision Malaysia reaches out to improve education access in rural Sabah

KOTA KINABALU – For a housewife living in a rural village in Kampung Pulutan, Sook, Tulid, Keningau, Lawrianah Joseph’s purpose in life was to ensure that her three kids would grow up healthily into successful adults, capable of chasing their ambitions.  

However, being in a rural village where education may not be a priority has kept the 32-year-old’s resources for useful information and to create awareness very limited.  

Looking around her village, Lawrianah found that many parents do not see the importance of education – they would be satisfied if their children would complete primary school, or at least until form 3. 

As an STPM graduate herself, Lawrianah knew the importance of education was to improve one’s quality of life, and she had always wanted to change the mentality of the other parents in the village.  

But alone with her ideas, she did not know where to start. 

However, luck was on Lawrianah’s side as one day in 2014 when humanitarian organisation World Vision Malaysia (WVM) approached her with the idea of starting a Children’s Club and invited her to become one of the facilitators for the programme.  

The Children’s Club is an informal educational platform set up to encourage and motivate children to learn. This allows WVM to engage with children aged 7 to 12 and to provide a safe space for children to socialise, learn and grow.  

Knowing that this would be a platform to help children and parents in her village understand the importance of education, Lawrianah did not think twice and agreed to take part.  

In order to ensure the sustainability of the activities, WVM has trained five mothers in Kampung Pulutan, including Lawrianah, to become facilitators of the prorgamme’s activities.

Now, Lawrianah and four other housewives are conducting the programme once a month, independently, without the help of representatives from WVM.  

“WVM has helped us a lot by training us to be advocators and facilitators; they have provided the materials for the activities, and we have learned a lot of skills and knowledge through their programme.  

“We have learned to identify weaknesses and talents in children. It opened a whole new learning chapter for the local community, improving our skills – parents and children to improve the wellbeing of the children here,” she said.  

Lawrianah also said that the programme has made her more creative and alert in ensuring the wellbeing of the children in her village.  

“Without this programme, we would not know how to enhance the development of our children, especially in education,” she added.  

The Children’s Club  

To improve the education performance of children in Tulid, Children’s Club – an informal education platform – was set up by the WVM to encourage and motivate children to learn.  

Topics introduced during the Club activities are thematic and the children have learned about savings, caring for the environment, child rights, child protection, consuming nutritious food, and how to read food labels to understand their nutrition content. 

“We would also teach the children about their safety, such as which body part should be protected and people cannot touch, and so on,” Lawrianah told The Vibes.  

Like the other facilitators, Lawrianah said she enjoys every minute of the programme because as a mother of children aged four, nine, and 12, she understands the need to nurture, guide, and assist children, especially those living in rural areas.  

Currently, the Children’s Club in Kg Pulutan has over 20 participants, and another 30 have grown up and are now studying in higher learning institutions. 

Kg Pulutan is about an hour's drive away from the nearest town, Keningau. Most of the villagers are small-scale paddy and palm oil farmers, and rubber tappers.  

To date, Lawrianah said that the children at Kg Pulutan are still excited to go to the Children’s Club.  

“They are even more excited if representatives from the WVM would come to visit,” she added.  

Minimising school drop-outs  

WVM’s assessment on children’s wellbeing in ten villages in Sook sub-district, including Kg Pulutan found that the community has poor education performance, and they lack access to preschool – those who attended preschool only started from the age of six.   

Joseph Lai, assistant manager of WVM (Malaysian Programmes) said that this has resulted in many students not being able to cope with age-appropriate learning when they started primary school, as they had only just begun learning the basics.  

“With poor teaching methods in schools, students also become disinterested or lack the motivation to study or attend school,” he said.   

According to WVM survey conducted in 2019, it was found that 83% of school-aged children are enrolled in pre-school; 55.6% of primary school children have literacy levels above average; 90.9% of children demonstrate satisfactory development growth that contributes to school readiness. 

Hence, Lai said the Children’s Club programme aims to get the children to be interested in learning by motivating children and parents to be excited about education.  

“Many of them have stopped going to school after the age of 12, 13, or 15.  

“The programme provides a lot of motivation and quality education to gear them up and catch up in schools,” he added. 

Lai also said the programme wants to solve other issues relating to children’s wellbeing in the Tulid community, including malnutrition. 

“Other issues noted are low household income, lack of diversification of income sources, poor nutrition knowledge or adequate nutritious food, child neglect, and the lack of knowledge on child rights and protection.   

“WVM hopes that the Children’s Club will be able to solve the issues above,” he added.

In addition to the Children’s Club, WVM also engages with parent-teacher association in schools and the headmaster/mistress to conduct education-related activities to raise awareness of the importance of education among parents, and the role of parents in their children’s education, among others.

WVM has also engaged with the district-level Education Ministry to provide talks to stress the importance of education and has been conducting sessions for parents in the community to raise awareness of the importance of education.  

“We aim to achieve attitude and behavioral changes to create a conducive learning environment for their children at home. We want to create a safe space for the children to socialise, grow and learn.  

“(During the activity once a month) we also expose them to fun learning activities that are outside of the school syllabus materials, so that they will be exposed to different things and topics at a young age.  

“We also want the adults (at the village) to understand that children need a safe space to grow and learn. This would also avoid rural children from going to dangerous places to play,” he added. – The Vibes, May 25, 2022