Paramasivam Chandrababu and the Orang Asli
Number of Hours Pledged: 150 hours
SDGs Supported: #1 No Poverty, #2 Zero Hunger, #3 Good Health and Well-Being, #4 Quality Education
Country: Malaysia
Summary: Deep in the forests of Malaysia live the Orang Asli, the peninsula’s oldest inhabitants. The Indigenous group—comprised of only around 150,000 people—struggles with poverty exacerbated by its rural location. Seeing a community lacking essential resources, Paramasivam Chandrababu devised a plan to help: Organize a volunteer event to donate clothes, toys and books to the village.
Chandrababu worked with a group of 14 volunteers—seven adults and seven kids—to gather items for donation. To protect the community against COVID-19 infection, the team applied safety measures during the collection process: All items were washed, pressed, sanitized and packed properly.
Then, in January 2022, Chandrababu and his team traveled two hours to the village’s location near the Cherandong Waterfall.
The response from the community was overwhelmingly positive. Along with supplying the collected items, Chandrababu and the other volunteers spent time talking to the villagers, who were happy to see visitors after almost two years of lockdown, he says.
By pledging volunteer hours from the event to the PMI Hours for Impact program, the team also helped support multiple U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including 1 (No Poverty) and 2 (Zero Hunger), which focuses on “creating a world free of hunger by 2030.” The event gave volunteers real-world experience in making progress toward the goals, and by end of the journey, the seven kids who volunteered were able to list all 17 U.N. SDGs.
Chandrababu’s effort to inspire social good continues: Now he’s encouraging more project leaders to pledge time to Hours for Impact. Together, the outcome will be significant and change lives, he says. “Protecting our human community and improving the lives of people globally is essential for creating peace, prosperity and equality.”