BFM: The Business Station - Review
“It was an eye-opener to go on the website, to look at the stories and art works. To realize that a lot of kids have been left behind during this pandemic because of the lack of digital access.”
- Tee Shiao Eek
“They talk about difficult family backgrounds, the struggle of not having money, bullying, or living in a neighborhood where there’s always rubbish everywhere.”
- Sharmilla Ganesan
Apa Pandang Pandang is an initiative by GoodKids Malaysia to bring awareness to B40 chidlren’s life challenges heightened by the pandemic, using creative methods.
It was launched on 18th May 2021. The ground work for the project has been going on since the late quarter of 2019.
GoodKids Malaysia also wants to highlight that 40% of Malaysians are in the lower-income group and 56% of them are actually in the urban area.
31% of them aged below 18 years old. This means there are 839,700 vulnerable children & youth in urban areas in Malaysia. (Source : EPU, 11th Malaysia Plan)
We understood that the students do not live in an environment that is going to offer a conducive space for the children to take time off to study art online. Parents do not think art education is essential. Some were not supportive and rather have their children do housework.
It was challenging for kids to draw their experiences during the pandemic via online classes, without face-to-face mentoring. While our objective was to map their living environment from children’s point of view, the kids themselves did not see beauty in their everyday situation to draw anymore. Finding inspiring prompts was tough.
The children are not digitally savvy. So operating a single Google Meet class may seem “easy” for most of us reading this article, however, it takes up most of the trainers’ energy trying to solve basics such as “Cikgu, tak dengar lah” and teaching them about mute buttons.
The children have strong opinions about matters that are important to our society. But because they have been brought up in environments that has told them to be quiet, rather than be expressive – they stutter when they asked about these matters verbally.
With paper and color pencils, they can dwell into their little world and show us as it is in their comfort.
Collectively, the works offer visual mapping of how extensive and how deep-rooted their problems are. This gives us all a chance to ponder about resources and our education system.
