Amala’s programmes run for the first time in Malaysia

Amala was able to reach displaced youth in Malaysia last year for the first time, thanks to a partnership with Fugeel. Fugee provides and maximises access to education opportunities for refugees in Kuala Lumpur. Fugee’s work to provide programmes that go beyond academic schooling encompasses enterprise work, capacity building and vocational training exercises and aligns closely with Amala learning and we were therefore delighted in their interest in our programmes. 

Towards the end of last year, Fugee ran Amala’s Ethical Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship courses to 31 students from Somalia, Pakistan, Eritrea, Syria and Sudan residing in Kuala Lumpur via online learning. Despite not being able to meet in person due to COVID-19 lockdown measures in Malaysia, classes went ahead online and students remained positively engaged. The Fugee team even organised for guest speakers to join online classes to present on their expertise and act as mentors. The photo below captures the moment when Simon, founder of SmartWage and an entrepreneur from South Africa, gave the Social Entrepreneurship class a short presentation about Idea Generation and his journey as an entrepreneur.

“Amala is a great initiative because it has designed something that fits and addresses gaps in refugees' education,” said Abdulmajid, Programmes Director at Fugee. “You are connecting bridges between school and tertiary education, the programmes are free and accessible, and the syllabus is modern and relevant to refugees. It therefore provided them with knowledge and skills that fit into what we humanity needs in our next generation of leaders.” 

Running Amala programmes in Malaysia would not have been possible without a grant from Allen & Overy in Singapore, and of course, our partnership with Fugee. We look forward to continuing the partnership with this competent team to run more Amala programmes and allow more groups of displaced youth to access transformational learning in the near future. 

“It is great to be able to bring our Amala programmes to Malaysia, and have a presence in an area of the world where we have not worked before, but that has a huge population of refugee youth seeking education and opportunities,” said Mia Eskelund, Co-founder and Co-executive Director at Amala. 

To learn more about our partnership with Fugee, check out their blog here.