Teach For Malaysia COVID-19 Response

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, there is an urgent need for us to come together to:

1. mitigate disruptions in the lives of, and 
2. support the wellbeing and learning of 

our students, teachers, school leaders and parents. This is especially important for our most marginalised and vulnerable communities, as the Movement Control Order (MCO) in Malaysia is disproportionately affecting them. 

As the world faces this unprecedented scenario, many underprivileged families across the globe and locally are experiencing financial difficulties due to social distancing measures. Medium and small business owners are struggling to keep their businesses afloat. Many others have had their jobs put on hold, thus losing their livelihoods.

Given the current reality in which many of our students and their families are struggling to fulfil their basic needs, we acknowledge education is unlikely to be their top priority. This situation is not new, but has been made even more apparent during the extended MCO. 

Therefore, at Teach For Malaysia, we are focused on learning and working together with our students, teachers, school leaders and parents to co-create and constantly improve meaningful solutions to the many challenges that have arisen and that continue to emerge during this time of uncertainty. 

We are doing this by checking in on our students’ situations and wellbeing through Fellows, as well as holding constant dialogues with teachers, school leaders, district and state education officers (PPDs and JPNs), and Alumni social enterprises to better understand the needs of the community. 

Based on these experiences, we are also simultaneously compiling our learnings and creating resources to share with the public so that others can contribute their own learnings, and use these resources through adapting them to be used in their own respective contexts.

As part of our collective approach, we will work with our partners, Alumni and Fellows to share and learn from their initiatives and learnings based on what they are currently doing to support our communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can find out more about all these ongoing projects and the stories emerging from these various efforts below. We will continue to update this section as these projects progress:

1. Support for students
2. Support for parents
3. Support for teachers
4. Support for school leaders

Finally, we are continuously finding ways to galvanise collective action to support those most in need. If you have any suggestions or would like to contribute and get involved in our efforts in any way, do reach out to us at partnership.development@teachformalaysia.org.