Malaysian lass honoured by Queen E
KUALA LUMPUR: Heidy Quah, founder of the Refuge for the Refugees (RFTR) organisation, was only 17 when she decided to embark on “meaningful and productive activities” in her life before going to college.
After finishing secondary school, Quah and her friend Andrea Prisha, the co-founder of RFTR, were looking for volunteer opportunities when they found out about a refugee school in Sungai Besi which really needed teachers.
They volunteered in 2012 and had planned to be there for just four months. However, they realised the refugee children were teaching them so much more in return – values they would not learn in school or university.
“When we met the headmaster to tell him that our time there was almost done as we were about to start college, he said it was fine because the school was going to be closed due to a lack of funds.
“We were shocked to hear that and felt this was unfair to the kids. There we were going off to pursue our studies when theirs was short-lived. How could we let it be like that? So, we decided to run RFTR as a project to raise funds and awareness,” said 23year-old Quah in a recent interview.
RFTR is a non-profit organisation committed to raising awareness on Myanmar refugees in Malaysia as well as to provide education for refugee children. It currently runs 10 refugee schools, nine of which are in the Klang Valley and one in Penang. It is in the midst of setting up 25 schools in Myanmar.
Quah was selected as one of the 60 recipients from 52 Commonwealth countries to receive the prestigious Queen’s Young Leaders Award last Thursday in London.
Quah, an accounting and finance student at a private college, was the only Malaysian to receive the award from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II this year. She is the second Malaysian to receive the medal after Calvin Woo, 22, who received it last year for his contribution to the education of underprivileged students.
“Never in my life did I think I will be meeting the Queen, what more to receive an award from Her Majesty. That was my third time visiting London.
“Every time I’m off to London, people would say: ‘Hey, you’re off to meet the Queen?’. This time I told them: ‘Yeah … I am literally meeting the Queen’.” – Bernama