By Suraya Usamah
GOMBAK, 25 March 2015: Umamah Raoof, a third year psychology student succeeded in making her and her familys dream come true by establishing a charity programme aimed at providing orphans with basic education in English language.
œEven though these kids go to school, they do not get much attention from the caretakers, like other ordinary kids. They need someone to guide them in their education and we try our best to do that, said Ummah who is the founder of Project Helping Orphans, Providing Education (HOPE).
The name of the project speaks for itself; the objective is to help orphans in a different way than the usual. Project HOPE aims at improving the orphans chances in the future by strengthening a very important element, the English language.
Umamah said: œLack of knowledge of English language can create a barrier to economic opportunities and hinders any chance of success for these orphans.
In collaboration with the Caring Club, Project HOPE covers five orphanages located in different parts of Kuala Lumpur.
However, the orphanage with the most number of children is Rumah Titian Kasih, which is at Titiwangsa, inclusive of 90 children in total and is currently the main focus of Project HOPE. The volunteers will be visiting the orphanage on Saturdays and Sundays of every week.
œUnlike the other orphanages, Rumah Titian Kasih includes a large number of children, that somewhat adds more to their lack of education quality, because of the less attention given to each child, said Umamah.
The first visit was on 7Â March; Umamah had set up an English placement test to evaluate the childrens level of English in order to divide them into three levels. Later, the 20 volunteers will be given three children each to be in charge of the kids until the end of the programme.
The volunteers were asked by the caretakers not to show much love or affection towards the children because it may hurt them in return. Because there has been many cases where the orphans would get attached to some of the visitors and when they do not keep their promise of coming back, the children would feel abandoned and hurt.
Mushira Syed Arshad, a volunteer in the project argues, “It is difficult not to show love to them, even ordinary kids cannot live without love, what more orphans who were deprived of parental love.”
This issue will be taken into account by the founder as she said, “I will discuss this with psychology lecturers and seek their help on how we should treat the children, in order not to cause them harm by giving them something we think they need.”
œSheikh Fareed, a PhD student in IIUM was also very supportive and had helped us in getting sponsors. He had some connections with a few NGOs and was caring enough to help us with the sponsorship, added Umamah.***
