Stateless Children Sabah

The 70’s and 80’s saw a large influx of Indonesians and Filipinos into Sabah, Malaysia with the hopes of creating a brighter future for themselves and their families. Majority of them entered the country illegally and worked in estates, factories and timber mills for a pay that was below minimum wage due to their legal status.

Today, these communities of Indonesians and Filipinos have started families in Sabah and have children who are undocumented. These stateless children do not have access to government schools, healthcare, or any other government funded services. Most of them have no passports or any documentation and don’t even know their date of birth or even age. Their parents earn below minimum wage due to their legal status which restricts the types of jobs they can get thus forcing them into a life of poverty.

Through fundraising, self-funding and a little of help from their respective embassies, these communities have built makeshift schools for the children. The schools are very basic, inadequately equipped and don’t have enough teachers to provide a good education for the children.

• Self-equip the children with basic education to gear them into being independent adult
• Provide convenient environment and facilitation for the children to learn

It is called Etania School CLC (Community Language Centre) Java Keningau. The school is about 2 ½ hours away from Kota Kinabalu. The school is on a rented land from a landlord under a contractual terms. The school is built in an area with a large population of Indonesians and Filipinos that work at their timber mills there. The school has a total of 83 children, 75 children aged 5 to 12, and 8 children aged 13 to 15. Due to the limited number of classrooms, some of the children from different standards share classrooms. Children in standard 4, 5 and 6 shares a common classroom. So does children in standard 2 and 3. This is a challenge for the teachers to concentrate on the required course syllabus for certain standard. The school is funded by the meagre salary of the parents and through donations, as well as partial funding from the Indonesian government.

The present school structure is a semi-permanent structure which is constructed using plywood and wooden boards. The classrooms are not protected from the rain as rain water comes into the classrooms during heavy rain and they need some form of construction for the sides of the building to protect them from the rain. The classrooms are small and are crammed, hence the suggestion to move the Class 5 and 6 students into a new 30 feet by 30 feet classroom, to facilitate a better learning environment. There is no electricity in the school compound, hence its important to maintain the high ceiling for ventilation.

Providing these children with a brighter future would mean giving them the necessary tools and skills to be able to develop themselves and pursue their interests and passions. By doing so, these children will be able to alleviate themselves from poverty and create a career that they are proud of. With that objective in mind, below is a 3-stage development plan to achieve that goal.