Transcript

The Need to Empower Lives | Kim Lim | TEDxINTISubang

[Applause] hi my name is Kim I'm a musician I play guitar in brass bed and they around town Cale I am also a fingerstyle guitarist and a singer-songwriter I'm also a composer I compose for visuals and movie productions assisting music director in movie productions also and I'm a co-founder of handsome hope volunteering platform and also a co-founder of a social enterprise called the feature project so before I introduce you what to what the future project is mainly I'm going to introduce to what I do in the future project today and my future journey but before I introduce you to that I want to tell you what is the refugee so many times when we had to introduce what the picture puja is we would tell people the picture project is bla bla bla bla and but all our shares are refugees and people will go like what are refugees so refugees are people that have to flee from their current country their homeland because war persecution or political conflicts are happening back in the country so it's not safe for them to remain saying that they choose to leave their homeland and seek for another country for hoping that they will find a safe place to stay and gain a sustainable living so that's the definition of a refugee to us so if I want to tell you some facts that you probably will find it on Wikipedia but hopefully after my speech and with my tone today you'll find it much more alarming and very urges there are actually sixty-five million refugees in the world today we can now form with these populations we can now form the third largest country in the world by selling only 5% gets to resettle and when I talked about recently it means that it means that when they seek refuge from another country they register themselves under the United Nations as a refugee or an asylum seeker waiting for around seven to twenty or properly thirty years to get resettled to another country gaining citizenship so they have will have better access to access to education medical health care or probably be able to gain an income from there so that that is called resetting so five percent of them only gets to resettle so what happens to the rest of the ninety five percent so the rest of the ninety five percent either are stuck in refugee camps where limited food or water are provided they are either stuck in the country they seek refuge from where they don't get to gain an income or no shelter no food no one to support or they are either sent back to their homeland where war and persecution continue to happen right there so zooming in to Malaysia there are more than 150 thousand registered refugees now in Malaysia but Malaysia is not under the UN Refugee 1950 1951 UN Refugee Convention signatory therefore there are no refugee camps in Malaysia this 150,000 registered refugees have no legal rights to work they cannot gain a sustainable income therefore no better livelihood no access to education no medical health care sometimes no shelter above their head or even food on their table so going back to three years ago when me and my co two co-founders cook from the volunteering platform called Hansel what we do is we turn our University students as volunteer to the underserved community providing the education assistance so I was a musician and all I know what to do it is music so I teach music so when I was teaching music there I organize and conduct a tree of tree fundraising concerts along the way raising a raising money for education and from there last year many of our kids start dropping out of school so from my class 22:10 to 8 to 5 and we were really worried and very concerned about this situation so we went for home visitations try to understand why our kids are dropping out of school and we realized that in their family in this community they faced a very big financial problem the kids are either they cannot afford to go to school or either they have to quit school to work to support a family of probably five to ten but at the same time we also observe that everyone knows how to cook because even a 10 year old can cook for a family of five to 10 I'm 26 years old this year but I cannot cook for myself so we were really amazed by by this thing and how resilient and strong were they and we wanted to create a platform for them where they can showcase these skills to our customers our clients are our public and so we created the picture project so to officially introduce you to the beecher project right now the future project is catering and delivery service we are associate the price but all our cooks are refugees so now we have eight families with us we have two from Afghanistan - from Syria - from Myanmar one Iraq and one Gaza and I hope you all have your lunch because I'm going to show you some of our food this is from Afghanistan it's called Palani and - is our favorite from Gaza chicken Mandy how much time break from Syria this is like real pictures that I me and my photographer token so this is chicken biryani I know everyone here is very familiar about chicken biryani in Malaysia but when you try to keep Bernie from Syria it is the bomb is different and on our lunchboxes we do place a story of the particular family that cooked their food where they came from was the journey coming here and what they faced was struggle they they they went through and how your purchase can actually empower them in their daily lives so to further introduce you to the feature project I'm gonna introduce you to two of our families one the first one would be canoe family in Ching canoe means mother and the reason why we call her mother because we call our families families we didn't we don't call them beneficiaries we don't call them suppliers there's one time our intern came in and he asks us so these suppliers and go like no don't call them suppliers they are our family so we called up we call canoe our mother and when she first started with the teacher project she was the first hope for the future project and we sat together she cooked what she can with a nice and then we realized that oh this one can actually be promoted to the public and we try to encourage her to to try and cook for our public and we get a bunch of friend of 20 to 30 where they were having meeting and we say like oh can you seven give me one coming different mazaa then then they they live on tribe and we try to encourage canoe canoe was really skeptical about the idea about joining the picture pooja she was in confident because she don't think that anyone would buy someone something that was cooked by a poor or something from home couldn't be promoted outside and we try to encourage her for a very long time and until she was she was convinced to try out 20 to cook 20 packs for our friends and when we cook for them we ask for feedback and the feedback was very positive so we convey these positiveness to renew and she gained more confidence through there from transition she cooked forty fifty and today you can call two hundred packets per meal per time and since joining the picture project she could afford to send her kids to school she could buy stationaries for her kids and they used to eat rice and just soup or vegetable that's all and now she can't afford to put meat on her table for her family so this is good news the next family is ali i don't know why the phone is like that but okay so ali came from Syria this one is a bit depressing so my one your tissue out when Annie came from Syria he was he used to be a compliance officer in Western unit back in Syria how he described himself being in Malaysia is his life was imposed because of his qualifications he no one recognises his qualifications here he had to work odd jobs going being a waiter in the restaurants or washing dishes washing car just to sustain his family who his brother-in-law his sister and his one year old nephew this is three years already came to to sustain them give them a shelter and when the reason why they choose to king to come to Malaysia by plane is because of his one-year own nephew at that time if they were to take the route to Europe by water is very very dangerous for a kid and therefore they choose to come to Malaysia but knowing that surviving in Malaysia is way harder than surviving in Europe because they just they just couldn't get a job a decent job to sustain a family and when when Ali got settled down here he wanted to bring two of his parents to Malaysia and but they couldn't bring him bring them in because at that time cereal in the law in Syria had to change and they couldn't escape from Syria and he took them a year to be able to bring the parents back into Malaysia and when the parents were in Malaysia they faced a bit of psychological problem depression because of the traumatic traumatic experience that they went through back in the country or the journey here and they have nothing to do in Malaysia and his dad used to be an architect and he was a really really amazing architect back in Syria but here he was nothing and he lose his voice because of how traumatized he was and so Ali came to us asking the picture project if we could help up his mom because his mom cooked really good food and the chicken biryani was cooked by his mum just now and so we tried we went to try his food and we find that the food was really really amazing without hesitation we say yes your mum can be on board with us and since joining the teacher project 2 to 3 months we see improvements in how his mom's psychological well-being is that could speak that he had a voice for himself and started speaking and it was really really overwhelming for us to see situations like that not not how the picture project would just give them a sustainable living but the feature project can actually help them improve their well we improved their psychological thinking and things like that so it really was really overwhelming and it's the field that keeps driving us to do what we are doing today so there was Ali's family going back to the problem 65 million refugees in the world 150 thousand registered refugees in Malaysia and the picture project is only helping eight families now it all seemed so extraordinary already right which turn that was like this but sometimes I wonder if everyone in this room here or half of the population in Malaysia who lives above the poverty line would have just shared a meal with someone from the other sub community whether you're right whether they are a refugee especially it's someone with disabilities or orphanage or anything and any any people from the funders of community we just share a meal with them understood their problems and probably make a simple app probably when someone was walking with his walking frame and you give him give him a leaf or someone couldn't have food and you share your food any simple act I think that's more extraordinary because in the picture project we don't believe in doing things alone we believe in changing the world together collectively so that's all for my speech thank you very much [Applause]