On March 1, a group of young volunteers established Teach for the Needs (TFTN), an online community to provide an opportunity for the less fortunate pupils to experience better education, at least partially similar to that of their more fortunate peers from privileged households. Currently 3.8% of the 3 million students in schools fall below the poverty line and the TFTN programme caters to this group.
The aim is to increase cognitive or IQ development via extra tuition classes.
The second is EQ development via emotional interactions and relationship building with the pupils. Often households facing financial and familial issues fail to provide these two relevant aspects in a child’s scholastic experience, to supplement formal education from attending schools.
En. Anas Alam Faizli, Projects department, Project Coordinator at Talisman Malaysia sits on the board of 5 members who facilitate TFTN. He was involved in the formal incorporation and structuring for the startup organisation of 120 volunteers. This involved charting of organisational strategy, policies, operating procedures and matters relating to partnerships with related bodies, promotional activities and fund-raising.
He helped design and maintain structured evaluation tools to monitor the students’ test results and structured a database of non-teacher volunteers. Comparative research and analysis of education system and tools is also under the purview of this department.
“We have 74 volunteers and 20 are teacher-ambassadors who teach for free. By getting society’s focus back to these pupils, people will realise these children too have got potentials to be developed,” said En. Anas.
“Volunteers are constantly sought and financial support is also key in helping the programme reach out to more children. Currently, we have 150 children under our programme.”
As a target, TFTN aims to cater to 1,500 students, with a force of 300 ambassador-teachers and work with 5 orphanages by the end of 2017. So, to our colleagues at Talisman, En. Anas is part of a noble cause.
Your support whether through volunteerism or donations could aid the mission. Let’s see how we can help out.