M Ellery- Giving Refugees a Right to an Education

This video was created by Liam Taylor, one of the 2018 volunteers for Westgate Refugee Support. I will be volunteering with Liam and 12 others from 9th -23rd January 2019.

This year, I became a member of the Westgate Refugee Support, an organisation run through my church, Westgate Baptist, that has been financially supporting and educating refugees in Kuala Lumpur the past 5 years.

In January 2019, I will have my first experience in refugee communities. I will be volunteering in makeshift schools (or otherwise known as learning centres) in Kuala Lumpur. Sadly, refugees are not given the right to access the Malaysian education system and cannot attend schools. The learning centres in which the refugees attend are limited due to lack of funding, additional space, resources and teachers. Many of them are set up in apartment buildings with no outdoor spaces for the children to play. Some of these apartments can have up to 50 students. On average, the children that attend these learning centres have an education of a Year 3 student, even though they can be 15 or older.

Being a qualified teacher myself, I will also be doing some teacher training and be training girls aged 14- 19 who are expected to be the teachers within these communities. These girls have no education training but are doing the best they can to teach children who so eagerly want an education. The other time I am in KL, I will be teaching in these learning centres and it might be the first that many of the refugees have been taught by a real teacher.

Any donation is appreciated and will all go directly to the learning centres to provide better resources for the refugees.

Marion Ellery
Westgate Refugee Support