Graduation at Fordeco Sawmill in Lahad Datu
Education Department Officers from KL and KK on friendly visit
Short write-up of Borneo Child Aid Society's background:
The first three centres started in 1991 in Lahad Datu areas on request from local parents and children in the plantations. The purpose of the project was to help fulfill the pledge of education to every child, as it is expressed in the UN's Child Rights Convention. Our focus is on basic education and we have no other motive of neither political, religious or other kind, except to offer basic education for needy children. With initial funding from a Holland based NGO, we started schools for the worker's children with several plantation companies
Borneo Child Aid/Humana Child Aid Society Sabah is presently a fully independent, Malaysian registered NGO and from 1999 depending on support from first of all local plantation companies as well as other companies with a high CSR profile.
In 1999 we were cooperating with the Lau Gek Poh Foundation of Hap Seng, which paid most of the expenses. In 2003 their sponsorship ended and we have since then been depending on each plantation to provide funding for the education of the children, which they are housing in the plantation. It is still one of our main challenges to fund expenses for 200 teachers and staff and to get all our plantation partners to live up to their social responsibility towards the children.
Content of Education:
The range of education at our centres is from Kindergarten 1. and 2. year and up to the level of primary school grade 6.
Many children will have quite a high age, when they complete grade 6 level, as their school start has been at a late age compared to most local children.
The education provided at our centres is run according to Malaysian curriculum and with Malaysian textbooks. We encourage the teachers to use a lot of visual aid as well as a weight on creative elements with singing and arts integrated in the lessons.
Additional some Indonesian content has been allowed through the government to government agreement with Indonesia about sending teachers to our project. Presently 109 teachers from Indonesia are attached to the project along with more than 200 employed by our society.
Funding
Funding is still mainly from the plantation companies with about 70 % of our expenses. The rest comes from donations from companies and notably from the Embassy of Finland, which has been happy about our project as it is in line with the Child Rights Convention. The Embassy has not in any way put conditions, except that we of course supply our audited financial reports to them.
The present average cost of running the project is RM 2000 per month for 50 children. That is RM 40 per child/month.
Expenses cover salaries, transportation, school materials, books, work permits and administration as well as taxes as we are still waiting for tax exemption.
We hope to reach our aim of rm 40 per month to give space to some improvements for our teachers as well as supply mini libraries plus more audio visual materials to the centres.
With RM 40 per month per child our project remains one of the most cost effective education project.
As it is the case for all NGO's these years, funding has been a problem in the past year of crisis, some of the plantations continue to only pay about 50% of the actual cost of running the centres. This is an issue which is causing some economic problems for us.
EU's EuropeAid, Embassy of Finland, UNICEF Malaysia, EAC Foundation, Neste Oil, Knorr Bremse, The HSBC Bank, Poul Due Jensens Fond (Grundfos) , Jebsen and Jessen, Schou Company are among our important sponsors.
Registration:
In 1996 our society was officially registered with the Registrar of Societies under the name: Humana Child Aid Society Sabah (123/96).
In the years after the registration, a number of the centres were approved as Kindergartens by the Department of Education.
In 2005 we had a visit to all our centres by officers from the Ministry of Education in Kuala Lumpur and from the Sabah State Department of Education headed by the director then Dr. Mohammad Nor.
The visits ended in a decision by the Ministry to approve our centres as "Pusat Bimbingan", thereby taking into consideration that many of the children are much above kindergarten age.
Our society has been a social NGO member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil for the past 5 years. The sustainability process with the RSPO has caused many plantations to take up their social responsibility towards the children.
Effects of our programme for the students at the Humana Learning Centres:
We presently have 3 major focus areas:
Preschool and primary level education for
1) Children in remote plantations without other access to school.
2) Children from underprivileged homes in towns in Sabah.
3) Children of the bajau laut ethnic group in Semporna and Lahad Datu areas and other local groups lacking proper education.
The children at our projects are without access to education mainly due to distance, poverty or legal status.
Plantation Children:
Majority of the plantation children are born in Sabah of legalized plantation workers and they hold a "orang asing" birth certificate, which does not provide them access to government schools.
By providing education, we prevent the children from following their parents in the field to help pick loose fruits and thereby becoming de facto child labourers.
As both parents will be employed to be legal in the plantation, there will be no one to look after children at their quarters. Therefore many children tend to follow their parents in the field.
In our experience more than 50% of the children will regularly do child labour, if no education is present.
In the plantations, where we have a learning centre it will be less than 10% and down to 0% who will do child labour.
We are certain that our projects in the plantations help to keep the children from becoming child labourers and importantly give them a chance for a proper education.
More than half of the children graduating from grade 6 will go for secondary school back in Indonesia or Philippines.
We are in the process of looking into programs for the school leavers from the plantations, who remain in Sabah.
Town Children:
The children at our town centres are often children at risk of becoming street children, if they are not taken properly care of with education.
We have very good experiences with these children, who usually are very talented, if given a proper chance.
At this time we are providing education to more than 1300 children in the towns of Lahad Datu and Semporna
Bajau Laut Children/Orang Asli Children:
We are working on a new focus area, which is projects for the bajau laut (sea gypsies) children off the East Coast of Sabah, along with the plantation projects.
They are an ideal stateless people, traditionally roaming the seas between Mindanao, Borneo and Sulawesi.
We have one project running and 3 projects to be constructed 2010.
The bajau laut are probably the most maritime people in the world, and they have generations of experience from living at sea in balance with the coral reefs and fishes. But when they get in contact with urban life, the situation very often is miserable , and especially children are subject to all kinds of abuse living on the streets, and youngsters are being recruited for fish bombing gangs, using simple bombs or cyanide for an easy catch, and with devastating effects for the coral reefs.
We are running this in cooperation with local WWF to ensure that the children are trained as guardians of the reefs, and that they are not recruited for fish bombing gangs later.
Torben Venning
Project Director email: tv@borneochildaid.org H/P ( +60) 019-8084402