Chin Children’s Education Centre

We are a school with close to 100 Myanmar refugee kids. The school gives these kids their only opportunity to receive an education. These children are four to 16 years old. They are of refugee status, and hence they cannot attend any proper educational institutions such as government, private and international schools. The only form of schooling they get is from the centre, where classes are conducted for five hours, five days a week. You may have wondered where the older kids study: they don’t. Very,very few of them get the golden opportunity to. The moment a kid reaches 17 years old, they neglect their education and work. Unskilled labor does not pay well: if they manage to find a job, they may earn RM20–30 a day, barely enough to support their family. And without an education, that is all they will be earning for the rest of their lives.

Our needs

Running the centre only requires a mere RM1200 a month – less than the monthly salary of an average fresh graduate. The breakdown is RM400 for rental of the premises, RM240 for utilities, RM100 for telephone/internet, RM100 for stationery and the remaining RM360 for whatever else needed to run the school. Besides the volunteers, there are also five regular teachers – two are sponsored by UNHCR and three are hired.

Every month, the centre collects RM20 from each family to pay the salaries of the hired teachers. The fact is, the families of the children are simply too poor to support the centre, which is the greatest shame.

How you can help

Any amount and any sort of donations are more than welcomed. It’ll be great as well if anyone who has the experience with things like these could drop us a call or an email to offer us your expertise.

We also need volunteers:

Teachers, Medical staff (doctors, nurses, therapists), Drivers, Accountants or office managers

Please contact Heidy Quah at heidyquah@hotmail.com/refugefortherefugees@gmail.com, drop me a message on Facebook (Heidy Quah) or give me a call at 012 3073714 if you’re interested.