ACHIEVEMENTS AND AWARDS SIJB's "School for Rohingyas" wins SIROM Best Practice Award A chance meeting with a group of refugees from Myanmar, the Rohingyas, when helping out during the Johor flood Relief led to Soroptimist International of Johor Bahru (SIJB) winning the Best Practice Award at the 8th SIROM Biennial Conference held in Penang recently. The SIJB entry was selected out of the 4 projects submitted for the Award. The judges were unanimous in their decision that the project to establish a school for the children of the Rohingyas was the most deserving. The Rohingyas are not recognized as citizens by the Myanmar government and appeared to have been marginalized and were very much in need of help. This group had been residing in Malaysia as refugees for 17 years and in all that time did not even have access to education for their children. The club assessed that one of their most urgent needs was a school for their children since they could not be enrolled in local schools. SIJB contacted the UNCHR and several other corporate bodies both from JB and Singapore and with their help was able to set up a temporary school. The first venue for this school was the dilapidated verandah of a mosque, but despite the challenge, 20 children enrolled on the first day and the enrolment is still growing. The Rotary Club of Kota Tinggi then helped to make the classroom more habitable and the school is now well on its way. Two teachers are currently being trained for the school funded by the UNCHR and SIJB is working with the Singapore Teachers College to formulate a syllabus which would be relevant to these children. This project came under the focus areas of International Goodwill and Understanding and also Education. The second prize went to SIPJ for their project "Peace through Yoga". This project was also unusual in that 3 clubs worked together on one project, aptly named '3 Clubs 1 Heart'. The other 2 clubs involved are SI Shah Alam and SI Bangsar. The event was conducted in a park belonging to the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre. T-shirts were sold as tickets to participants; benevolent sponsors also donated 'tickets' to underprivileged children who had a great time trying all the contortions. Volunteers from as far away as Bandung came to help conduct the mass yoga session. Part of the proceeds was used to buy umbrellas for the street children of Bandung and to upgrade a school for the physically challenged in Janda Baik, which is the project to benefit from the "3 Clubs 1 Heart" funds. This project came under the focus area of International Goodwill and Understanding and Economic and Social Development. The third prize went to SI Bangsar for their project 'Lights of Knowledge' which dealt with the upliftment of a segment of a marginalised community by focusing on their educational needs. The target beneficiaries comprised 48 inmates of the Nur Zahara Welfare Centre who were neglected and abused and also 17 aboriginal children from the Temuan community. SI Bangsar adopted a hands-on approach and tackled the problem stage by stage. They first did psychological counselling for these students with the help of Psychology major students from HELP College. They then gave them bi-weekly tuition classes. An Educational Resource Centre was then set up. A Book Barrel collection was made for this. And finally a Children's Personal Safety Workshop was conducted. This is an ongoing project and SI Bangsar has helped to provide many facilities for this needy community The SIROM Best Practice Award was initiated in the 6th Biennial Conference in Putrajaya in 2005 giving clubs an opportunity to showcase the projects that they have worked on and contributed to, during the 2 years of the Biennium. A panel of independent judges was appointed by the committee to select the winners based on a given set of criteria. The judges commented that the projects submitted were excellent in their scope and in the results achieved. To quote one of the judges, 'for a small group of women you are doing work with far reaching benefits and yet very few people are aware of this.' It was agreed that clubs should be garnering more publicity and SIROM will be organizing a workshop for clubs on how to publicize their project. The only disappointing aspect was that out of 15 clubs in the Region only 3 clubs submitted projects. SIROM is working on getting more clubs to submit projects for the award. Prepared by: Dhamayanthi Vaithianathan Organising Chairperson Best Practice Award