Participants of the programme with the goal of transforming the living standards of three villages in Kiulu.
KOTA KINABALU: RYTHM Foundation, the Social Impact Initiative of the QI Group, has made its first philanthropic foray into Sabah by collaborating with Good Shepherd Services, a non-profit organisation which has a strong presence in the state’s local communities.
Guided by the values of RYTHM, an acronym for Raise Yourself to Help Mankind, the Foundation’s maiden project in the state recently focused on academic support for primary school students and a youth development programme to empower young people with life and business skills.
Head of RYTHM Foundation, Santhi Periasamy shares, “While impoverished populations are spread across Malaysia, Sabah could stand to benefit the most from community support. So, we decided to start here since we had not engaged in any initiatives in East Malaysia and our partner organisation has been working on projects aimed at improving the livelihood of rural communities since 1956.
After the first lockdown in Malaysia due to Covid-19 last year, Good Shepherd initiated an academic support programme by offering tuition classes to students in rural communities.
Tracy Soidi, a senior programme officer of Good Shepherd says: “We saw a need because online classes cannot be conducted in these areas due to poor and unstable internet connection in some parts of the villages. Most of the children also do not own their own devices and have to depend on family members who have smartphones. So, when the schoolteachers were giving students worksheets, we saw that tuition classes could be helpful.”
The organisation’s education initiative eventually evolved into a full-blown Community Adoption Programme which kicked off in April this year, propelled by its newfound partner, RYTHM Foundation. The programme is a three-year commitment with the goal of transforming the living standards of three villages – Kampung Lokub, Kampung Ratau and Kampung Talantang in the Kiulu region of Sabah.
The academic support initiative is focused on raising literacy rates within the communities and the syllabus is curated to complement the students’ school curriculums based on suggestions from their teachers. Good Shepherd also trains the tutors who are primarily youth who have just completed their secondary school education and women from within the community itself.
This not only provides the youth with an opportunity to enhance skills and add on work experience, it also ensures the safety of the villagers while adhering to the lockdown standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Santhi Periasamy also added that the second facet of the RYTHM-Good Shepherd collaboration is the youth development initiative, which started with focus groups aimed at gathering information about the interests of the youth from the three villages. This also included recce trips to explore resources and identify areas with the most potential for building their businesses.
With RYTHM Foundation’s three-year pledge to improve livelihoods in the three villages in Kiulu, the community adoption programme will expand to include preschool support, women’s entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship skills by building upon the current efforts.
“We are excited and grateful to RYTHM Foundation because through this new collaboration, we have been able to expand this Community Adoption programme to other groups within these three villages. We hope it will open up more possibilities for collaboration with RYTHM Foundation and an exchange of expertise and knowledge that can benefit many more communities to reach out to here. At the end of the day, it’s about empowering these communities to be resilient and sustainable in all areas and building their trust,” says Soidi.