Co-Curricular 1 UCDF1911

GROUP ASSINGMENT
TECHNOLOGY PARK MALAYASIA
MPU2412-CC1
Co-Curricular 1
UCDF1911

HAND IN DATE: 3 JULY 2020

HAND OUT DATE: 11 SEPTEMBER 2020
WEIGHTAGE: 70%

LECTURER NAME: Vicknisha Balu

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NAME AND STUDENT ID OF GROUP MEMBERS:

1. SAMA NAJMIZADEH BAGHINI – TP058534 (LEADER)

2. VERON MATHEWS - TP054774

3. YASAL AHMED - TP057928

4. KANNAN UTHAYA KUMAR - TP058485

5. AKAALJOT SINGH A/L AWTAR SINGH- TP058674

6. OSAMAH SAEED BIN SNKAR - TP054081

7. NAVIN VENKATESWARALU - TP058454

8. NURZIRA RUSLAN - TP057417

9. UMAIR KHALID TP048723

10. TALHA IBNE HOSSAIN TP058200

11. AMIEL MUNJEN BIN KAMAL SATTIA - TP058821

12. THIRUKUMARAN A/L SARAVANAN - TP058812

13. WONG HOU YI - TP059350

14. NANDA ADITYA PUTA - TP058083

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TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT.............................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................5
CONTENT...............................................................................................6
PROBLEM..............................................................................................8
SOLUTION.............................................................................................9
METHODOLOGY...............................................................................10
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................11
REFERENCE........................................................................................12

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ABSTRACT

SHELTER is an initiative that was started by a group of friends that had similar aims to
help out children who are victims of abuse, neglected and have no place to live. The organization
started out in 1981 renting out a single-story bungalow in Petaling Jaya. Then, they focused on
providing shelter to those who got evicted from their homes. SHELTER has also helped children
from lower class by establishing 10 kindergartens for a short period of 1.5 years. Over the years
SHELTER has set up about 5 homes which has been reduced to 3 due to concerns regarding
issues faced by the children who are seeking for homes. The children or people who are in
SHELTER homes are in a comfortable environment and to those children who turn 18 have the
option to continue their education or enroll into other training courses. The aid provided by
SHELTER for the people in their homes include basic needs especially for the children such as
educational fees, necessary expenses such as transportation. They also provide for other families
with financial burdens such as donations and medical assistance for them. SHELTER gets most
of the income from three subdivisions such as the government, fund raising charity events and
sponsorship from the public due to them not having specific body of organizational structure.
The homes depend on voluntary workers and permanent workers who help the ones in need for
specific tuition subjects and physical education. However, some of people have faced difficulties
such as negligence and abuse from their initial homes who had to go sleep without a roof over
their head sometimes. These victims could be helped out if volunteers and non-governmental
organizations (NGO) is involved in helping out these children and adults to help them fund as
well as help them to heal from the emotional traumas that they had to bear. Due to the pandemic,
we are unable to reach out to them in person so, we reached out to them via a telephone call.
Lastly, the SHELTER foundation is in desperate need of extra assistance due to the pandemic;
the management would greatly appreciate if outsiders are willing to help out volunteering so that
this would help ease their burden during these tough times.

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INTRODUCTION

SHELTER is a registered welfare organization which was formed in 1981 by a group of

seven friends who wanted to help the children who were abandoned, abused, were neglected or
at risk. Initially, the group rented out a single-story bungalow in Petaling Jaya without any
furniture in order to facilitate the homeless children, but those children ran away with the money.
The group then decided to give the place to families who have been evicted from their houses.
As the number of families increased, SHELTER moved to the current location of Jalan Tinggi,
Petaling Jaya. SHELTER also established 10 kindergartens in squatter settlements, with a fee of
RM5/student. It was done in effort to help children from lower class homes to give them a good
start in life, but they had to close the kindergartens after 1.5 years when the number of children
started to decrease. SHELTER started community youth work among young prisoners in Kajang
Prison. They try to educate, help, and train the young prisoner in order to regain them their self-
respect so they can survive in the society later on. SHELTER also initiated a community center
known as “Drop Zone”. This center targets the age of group of 13-20 years old and is focused on
their personal development through healthy and positive activities. SHELTER noticed the need
to help teenagers who were beyond parents’ control and hence set up SHELTER HOME 2 in
1987, SHELTER HOME in 1995, and SHELTER HOME 4 in 1996 -2007 and SHELTER
HOME 5 in 2001-2006. Currently Celine is the person in charge who is looking after SHELTER
and its issues. After a few years SHELTER noticed that they need to focus on one rising concern
which was abuse, neglect and abandonment of children and youth and hence they narrowed from
5 homes to just three homes. All the children or people who are in SHELTER homes are in a safe
and secure environment as the management plan to guide them through the tough times and they
won’t abandon the children when they grow up. The children who turn 18 have the option to
continue study or else the management of SHELTER enrolls them into vocational training
courses.

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CONTENT

Understanding of Current Situation:

A. Monthly expenses & Monthly income:

i. Monthly Expenses:

SHELTER provides food and financial aid to families. Its purpose is to preserve the family unit
by providing the basic needs for the children such as food, financial assistance for tuition fees,
school fees, school bus expenses, homes utilities & maintenance, phone bills, transportation
vehicle fees, and foodstuffs for other underprivileged families. etc.

ii. Monthly Income:

Their financial sources are divided into three categories; they receive a small grant from the
Government, fund-raising charity initiatives and the bulk of their funds come from donations of
the public, and monthly operational costs currently can come up close to RM 200,000. Donation
from the public is one of their main sources on which SHELTER rely to keep going. SHELTER
do not have any single large organization, body, or corporation that supports us permanently.

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B. Quality of life:

First, they rely on donor money to cover their monthly home expenses because they do not have
a steady monthly income because there are many operational costs too. in addition to, their
donations have seen a significant decline since COVID-19 started. They already have some
regular donors who still help them, but that may not be enough all the time.

secondly, there are not enough volunteers and caregivers to provide services and assistance at
home at this time. SHELTER relies on volunteers and home workers to manage the daily work at
home. For volunteers, SHELTER needs teachers to provide lessons to children in order to have
the appropriate knowledge and skills. The tutors they currently needed from the community are:

 Bahasa Malaysia Tutor for std 1 to Form 5

 English Tutor for Std 1 to Form 5

 Math Tutor for Std 1 to Form 5

 Geography Tutor for Std 1 to Std 6

 Sejarah Tutor for Std 1 to Form 5

 Mandarin Tutor for Std 1 to Std 6

 Piano tutor for Std 1 to Form 5

 Guitar Teacher for Std 1 to Form 5

 Carpentry workshop tutor for teenage boys, aged 13 - 17

 Dance Instructor for teenage girls, aged 13 - 17

 Football Coach for teenage boys, aged 13 - 17

 Netball Coach for teenage girls, aged 13 - 17

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 Speech & Drama Tutors for all teenagers, aged 13 -17

Problem
Many people have gone through a lot of problems in their life. For some, they may not have
been chased out of their houses because of their parents. Some have even started their lives with
no shelter to protect them, or even to sleep in. Additionally, some of them have even run away
from their homes because they found their homes to be either too unhappy or too dangerous to
stay in.

With this in mind, ‘Shelter Home for Children’ was built in 1981 to assist any maltreated or at-
risk children. Despite the name implying that it is for children only, they also have kindly taken
in adults who need food and shelter. They plan to protect and guide all their children who reside
in that shelter.

They have said they accept both one-time donations, and recurring donations. These donations
can be used to pay for the household expenses and to help with the children’s activities.

The shelter has also allowed for outsiders to sponsor any children within the residence. They can
opt to pay for food, personal clothing, school, and tuition fees, and much more. Moreover, they
also allow for people to sponsor the monthly expenses such as water bills, electricity bills, and
rent.

They plan to help children overcome their recent trauma and try to reunite them with their
families where possible. Currently, the shelter has requested for basic necessities such as milk
powder, full-cream milk powder, peanut butter, jam, margarine and as well as oyster sauce.
These are some of the household items that they have requested urgently.

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Solution

Homeless children have become a major social issue for Malaysia, and this problem is
aggravated by several things such as lack of affordable housing, unemployment, and poverty. In
addition to help homeless children through SHELTER, there are several things and action that
we should do. One solution would be by doing a funding or simply donate to the shelter, as it is
one of the most important support that the organization needs in order to run all of the daily
operation is none other than money. The money that is given and collected to the shelter need to
be allocate to many aspects, as this shelter is dominated by children school supplies and toys are
the essential needs for them. Children do end upon homeless shelter along with their families,
and while shelters need to prepare for this, every donation that is collected helps in improving an
already tough situation for a child. Toys are also always welcomed to help the kids break up
some of the challenges of their life. Furthermore, not only in terms of education, but also the
medical aspect which is important for the shelter, as injuries happen and when not handled
properly can cause serious health risk and the risk grows exponentially when considering the
sanitary concern that are coupled with being homeless the donation that is given, do not have to
be always in the forms of money, it can be in forms of things like clothes and furniture.

The next solution is by being a volunteer to help the shelter, as there are lots of beneficial
things can happen for both sides. By being a volunteer, you can help during certain things such
as by painting the houses, fixing the facility and do some cleaning. The actions that is made by
being a volunteer, can help the shelter to cut their maintenance cost, which mean that the cost
can be allocate to another essential needs like food, as it is an important daily need for their
survival. While being volunteer, there are certain things that we can get, as it is a great and
meaningful experiences for our life. There are many lessons we can learn and see while being
volunteer as this would change our mindset and could makes us feel more grateful.

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Methodology

The Shelter Home for Children was approached via cellular network. Due to the corona virus or
Covid-19 around we could not investigate and visit the Shelter directly.

We found that it was appropriate to converse in the language that they were more comfortable in,
hence we decided that a native speaker of mandarin would be more suitable for this conversation.
This also helped us reduce the communication barrier that would or might have spawned with a
non-native speaker.

At the time of conversing, we asked them certain questions with their consent if we can disclose
such information or not.

It was a qualitative method as there was an interview and quires asked over the phone.

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CONCLUSION

To bring to a close, SHELTER, as its name suggests, acts a shelter for children who have
been abused, abandoned or at risk. This organization has been contributing to countless lives,
ever since the beginning of its establishment in 1981, starting small by renting a house for
homeless children to families evicted from their houses, community youth work to their own
community center called ‘Drop Zone”, and the list goes on. Currently, with the monthly income
that roughly reaches RM 20,000 which was achieved mainly by the help of donation, are spent
by SHELTER to provide basic needs for the children and families, such as food, financial
assistance, proper education and many more. However, the donations are not always sufficient
which adds up to be even worse since there are not enough volunteers and caregivers to help out,
as the result of COVID-19. This concerns can be tackled by of course donating, not only money
but also in the form of clothing, furniture and other basic necessities. Apart from that, one does
not always have to spend money to help out. You can also lend a helping hand by volunteering to
either paint the houses, help out with some cleaning or whatever form of assistance possible. By
doing that alone, you can cut their expenses for maintenance so that the expenditures can be
focused on important essentials.

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Reference

children, H. f., 2004-2020. ShelterHome. [Online]

Available at: http://www.shelterhome.org/index.cfm
[Accessed 29 AUGUST 2020].

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