By Harpreet Kaur & Tan Yew Kit (BAC Apprentices)
On 22nd October 2021, Team UPLIFT distributed 4 Samsung tablets to 4 Orang Asli students from SK Serendah, SMK Serendah and Pra Skeolah SK Serendah.
The team at 1MillionDevices worked closely with Jason from The Asli Co, to connect with these students who were in need of digital devices.
The team managed to interview all 4 students, accompanied by their mothers.
Stacy Jestina is a 10-year-old child with speech and hearing impairment. Since we do not know sign language, we interviewed Stacy’s mother, Ayu binti Jemeni. Stacy has been attending sign language classes online, and being the oldest in the family, she struggled to attend classes on a daily basis, having to share the only device available with her other siblings. This made remote learning very difficult. Stacy hopes that her education experience would improve as she will now be able to attend her sign language classes via Google Meets with the availability of an additional device.
Zulhaikal A/L Amri, a 14-year-old student from SMK Serendah is the oldest among his siblings, and just like Stacy, he too faced struggles in attending classes online. On days where he was not able to use his mother’s mobile phone to attend classes, Zulhaikal would complete the tasks given in a notebook and would only be able to hand in his homework once he gets a hold of his mother’s mobile phone again. Zulhaikal believes that the tablet will help ease his education journey, as he will now be able to prioritise online learning as well as complete tasks that are given to him online without any hindrances or delays.
Maylinda binti Roy, a 12-year-old from SK Serendah has been sharing her mother’s phone with 3 of her siblings for her online learning sessions. When all their classes coincided at the same time, Maylinda was left behind compared to the rest of her peers as she was not able to attend online classes consistently. Upon receiving the tablet, Maylinda can now attend her classes consistently and complete her homework in a timely manner via Zoom and Google Meets.
6-year-old girl Ayrina Zureen binti Abdullah, the youngest recipent out of the four, has also been using her mother’s device to attend online learning sessions. One of the obstacles faced was the phone constantly lagging, and sometimes crashing. The phone screen being too small, and a crack on the screen made the situation even worse.
Ayrina hopes that this tablet will be able to assist her further, even when she continues her primary education. Ayrina’s mother believes that her daughter would be able to cope as long as she has a stable device that is sustainable.
To end this on a sweet note, on 25th October, we received a screenshot message from Jason along with a forwarded video of Maylinda’s brother attending his online class with the tablet (shared by Maylinda’s mother), thanking us for helping them. It is moments like this that makes all the hard work worth it.
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