{"id":11512,"date":"2021-12-17T15:45:52","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T07:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/?p=11512"},"modified":"2021-12-17T17:21:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T09:21:59","slug":"striving-for-social-inclusion-and-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/striving-for-social-inclusion-and-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Striving for Social Inclusion and Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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by Tan Ze Kai<\/em><\/p>

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

I was a target of bullying as a child and I was in pain. Growing up, I\u2019ve always wished that I could make everyone in this world more empathetic. I started questioning, why were some people so mean? What if they knew it\u2019s wrong? Was there anything that I could do to create change?<\/span><\/p>

At some point, I came to realise,\u00a0 it\u2019s impossible to change the world. All I could do was to make little efforts to influence the people around me. That\u2019s when I decided to be an advocate for social inclusion and justice.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Name-calling<\/span><\/p>

I started off the journey by becoming a high school teacher under\u00a0<\/span>Teach For Malaysia<\/a>\u00a0to push for education equity. In my classroom, some students would often say things like \u201cCikgu, dia tu gay!\u201d (\u201cTeacher, he\u2019s gay!\u201d) or \u201cTeacher, student X sells vegetables at the market, hahaha!\u201d and then the whole class would laugh at the victim.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

I could have ignored those unhealthy behaviours – but I would not. I knew how the affected students would feel, so I decided to call out those behaviours and ask the students to reflect on the way they speak to each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In the end, we agreed that the word \u2018gay\u2019 wasn\u2019t a negative word and that it was wrong to ridicule other people or make fun of a person\u2019s occupation. Since then, I stopped hearing them ridiculing each other in that manner in my lessons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

This experience has taught me to call out if something’s not right, and that the most impactful changes could come from the little things I\u2019ve never thought about.<\/span><\/p>

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<\/p>\n

Changemakers unite<\/b><\/p>\n

Fast forward to December 2021, I\u2019ve been with Arus Academy, an education social enterprise for almost a year. I\u2019m so grateful to be able to play a part to advance social justice causes through my involvement in financial inclusion, financial literacy and digital literacy projects. <\/span><\/p>\n

Being in the team organising the <\/span>Digital Financial Inclusion Challenge 2021<\/span><\/a>, which gave 42 youths aged 18-30 voices on how to make financial services more accessible to the B40 community, was a super inspiring experience. <\/span><\/p>\n

How do we help a person with disability who also lives in poverty afford health insurance with adequate coverage? What if they cannot afford a decent smartphone to install an oversized multifunctional app needed to purchase the insurance? What can we do to help them overcome the barriers to getting protected?<\/span><\/p>\n

The team I facilitated won the second prize for the solutions they presented! (You may watch their presentation <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.) After the competition, they asked me, \u201cZe Kai, what do we do next? Can we join the Youth Committee to continue advocating for financial inclusion?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course you can!\u201d I replied.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their faces lit up with excitement. It really touched my heart when I saw their eagerness to contribute in uplifting the community. I will never forget that moment. <\/span><\/p>\n


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<\/b><\/p>

Equipping for greater service<\/b><\/p>\n

In addition, I am also grateful for the opportunity to co-create modules and run workshops for Arus programmes such as:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. The <\/span>e-Junior Maker Club<\/span><\/a> micro:bit programming course which has benefited 50 students aged 10-14 (including 35 fully-sponsored B40 students) in 2021, as well as<\/span><\/p>\n

2. The <\/span>Fun(d) For Life Guru Celik Kewangan<\/span><\/a> certification programme which has empowered over 641 teachers across all Malaysian states with financial literacy skills they can integrate into their lessons.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the side, I\u2019ve also joined <\/span>Dewan Muda Malaysia<\/span><\/a>, a 2-year fellowship designed to train the youths in policy-making, thanks to our co-founder, David Chak who introduced me to the opportunity. <\/span><\/p>\n

The culture in Arus spurs us to help each other to learn, grow, and this has taken me into an exciting journey in the past year. I would like to quote my manager, Yam Phui Yee, \u201cNo one I know leaves this place saying \u2019Meh, what a crap workplace\u2019, not even interns.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re also passionate about changing the world for the better, here\u2019s what I want to tell you: <\/span><\/p>\n

Every little thing counts, and YOU can make a difference!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Tan Ze Kai
Programme Associate, Community Engagement
Arus Academy<\/p>\n

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by Tan Ze Kai I was a target of bullying as a child and I was in pain. Growing up, I\u2019ve always wished that I could make everyone in this world more empathetic. I started questioning, why were some people so mean? What if they knew it\u2019s wrong? Was there anything that I could do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11512"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11540,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11512\/revisions\/11540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arusacademy.org.my\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}