Rural & Urban Poverty

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Addressing Poverty, Building a Just & Equitable Society

Isn’t Malaysia a developing country, rich with natural resources?

Why are there poor people? And some seem to be trapped in the poverty cycle for generations, why? There is no one easy answer to these questions. It may range from lack of opportunities, education, mind-set, structural oppression to systemic poverty. Hence, poverty alleviation would require both community development as well as advocacy on policies and structural changes.

There will be no lasting change if the community doesn’t truly desire or own the change process.

With this in mind, we see ourselves as partners to the Orang Asli, Sabah/Sarawak native, lowcost flat, squatter and refugee communities we are working with. We focus on empowering people, aiming for long-term development through development programmes that are best tailored to the needs and surrounding elements of that particular community.

Agriculture Development

An integral part of Malaysia economy and society.

The land is plentiful but it can only be sustainably fruitful with effective management and to that end, we partner the Orang Asli communities to setup agriculture projects and co-operatives, where they can be self-sufficient in the place where they feel most comfortable at while maintaining biodiversity. By providing sustainable agriculture research and training for farmers from Orang Asli and East Malaysian natives, they can apply and pass on the knowledge in their respective villages.

Economic Development

Empowering the poor towards financial freedom.

Our aim is to empower the poor towards financial freedom through financial literacy training, micro-finance and income generation programmes. We facilitated the set-up of Koperasi Sengoi Pribumi Perak, a cooperative for the Orang Asli community which now have over 1,000 members including children. We have also developed a Financial Literacy Programme (FLP) for the urban poor in collaboration with our partners. Since the programme kicked off in 2010, over 800 participants in the Klang Valley have completed or are undergoing the FLP training by our network partners. Over 100 have since started small businesses or other income generation activities.

Community-based Resource Centre

There’s great fun in safe places!

These resource centres are stocked with books, computers, toys, game sets, audio-visual aids and indoor game facilities for youngsters in the community to gather. It is also a place of knowledge with literacy programmes and learning interaction and collaborative skills with other youth. Working with partners, we have set up 4 resource centres – 2 in Klang Valley and 2 in Perak. Since February 2013, we also have a mobile resource centre – ‘ Bumblebee ’ bringing resources and programmes into various low-cost communities within the Klang Valley!

Youth Development Programmes

CARE’s vision is to see the youth of Malaysia become resilient and caring adults, capable of navigating their own lives and taking ownership of the community around them. We do this in CARE through various platforms like sports, guided study, music lessons and others for both rural and urban youths. Some of these platforms are used as part of our integration initiative between refugee youths and local youths. The objective is to create a community of youths who take care of one another regardless of religion, race and creed as well as experience transformational growth together.

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