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 On Wednesday, November the 13th, 56 volunteers from ExxonMobil subsidiaries in Malaysia had conducted a community program safely at “zoo Negara,” with 137 school students of Sekolah Bimbingan Jalinan Kasih (SBJK) as a part of ExxonMobil 3rd community program 2019.

 

The SBJK is a particular school for “street-students” aged 5 - 19, who are either homeless, orphan or at-risk children from urban, weak, broken families, welfare homes, or living in a poor social environment. The school, located in Jalan Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur, was specially set up by the Education Ministry in 2013 to provide free education for street children despite their background, including stateless children, who do not have identification documents. Here, students do not wear school uniform, they are not graded in school classes according to their age, but by their ability and are taught using a different syllabus and assessment.

 

“It is nice to be the reason for someone’s happiness, as a Committee Programme Lead, I’m thankful that the management had faith in me leading this project. My committee felt that there is a massive necessity for human capital development in our community, and we came across SBJK, the school for street students. We approached SBJK to discuss how ExxonMobil can play its part to ensure there is human capital development in the school community. As a result, we made the necessary upgrades to their school. As much as the facilities, it is also essential for the children themselves to have high confidence and the hunger to succeed. That is when we came up with our finale event – Riddles in the Jungle at Zoo Negara. It’s our pleasure to see all the smiling faces, “alleged the community leader.

 

Yet one would ask, “Why Zoo! Out of all places”. According to SBJK’s football coach, the students have been through so much in life, especially at such a young age. She said by bringing them to the zoo would give them a chance to forget those worries at home and enjoy the day with the employees despite their backgrounds, at the same time a day at a zoo event would have also helped the students to build their self-confidence and encouragement to strive for excellence in future.

 

Besides, most children love animals, and childhood is such a special time, the committee members believe the time spent at the zoo with its wildlife atmosphere is educational, recuperative, and is motivational for most of these kids who had no clue what a Zoo has to offer. The street kids have little knowledge of animals, which they probably would have read in books or watched in a cartoon. This activity could be their chance of exploring it on live.

 

The program started with ExxonMobil employees assembling a bus to transport all students from their school and some directly from their homes to the zoo.  After reaching the zoo, the employees then provided breakfast, lunch, and a drawstring gift bag at the Zoo's wild-life restaurant for each student packed with a cap, water bottle, Tupperware, and more.

 

Next, by teaming up with the Zoo Negara Educational department, the employees then conducted a treasure hunt activity contest for all the street students that inclusive of fun jungle trivia’s along with exciting challenges.

 

Later, The employees further guided on a zoo tour for pre-school street students. The employees also facilitated all the students to a panda exhibition than assisted them with an animal show in the zoo.

 

Still and all, the icing on the cake is the finishing touch of the program, when the employees served Ice-cream for all the street students after having a fun wildlife adventurous day under the hot sun at the zoo. The look of cheerfulness and joy of those kids when receiving the ice-cream was undeniably satisfying towards all employees.

 

“Joining a Community program is a great way to contribute back to the public. Apart from that, it also gives an insight into how blessed and fortunate some of us are, and makes us more appreciative of what we have.  I hope ExxonMobil will continue providing this opportunity to all employees annually. “Endures Sasi Kumar.

 

In addition to the main activities at Zoo Negara, The community program also involved in making upgrades at SBJK. Some of the upgrading projects that was done in the school includes upgrading the school’s computer room by providing 16 refurbished laptops, updating new educational software’s, sponsoring a new wireless color printer, providing a new wireless router, improving by upgrading the school’s existing RAM cards, SSDs, all educational purpose necessary software, providing new power surge protectors for the students, and also offering software refurbishment for existing teachers laptops and administrative desktops.

 

What is more, the community program also upgraded the school tailoring workshop, by servicing 19 school’s existing sewing machines and sponsoring a new embroidery machine for the students. The community program also continued with a two-day basis, Robotic classes for the SBJK students to learn about artificial intelligence (AI) and how to get engaged in building simple robots and do business out of them.

 

The ExxonMobil’s community program with the Street Children’s at Zoo Negara is the third of five community programs arranged by its representatives for 2019. The primary mission for the 3rd ExxonMobil community program is to generate a sustainable impression and positive transformation in the community, which was voted by the majority that mission accomplished.