Live & Learn

Play therapy is to children, what counselling is to adults. Play therapy - you guessed it - utilises play, a child's natural medium of expression, to help them convey what they are feeling more easily through toys, rather than through words. Trained therapists use playtime to observe and gain insights into a child’s problems, which they then use to help a child explore emotions and deal with unresolved trauma, and learn ways to cope or redirect inappropriate behaviours. We find out more about play therapy from Tracy Ho, a Certified Supervisor for Play Therapy, from Hils Learning.

Out Of The Box, is an ongoing series where we explore alternative ways to teach and learn, and which is done in collaboration with Anyaman Preschool.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Amnesty International Malaysia will be running a workshop for artists on police violence, custodial deaths and police accountability on June 26th 10AM-7PM. We discuss what the workshop is about and the importance of political art.

To sign up for the workshop, click here: https://www.amnesty.my/2022/06/02/drawing-rights-an-artists-workshop-on-police-brutality/

Image credit: Amnesty International Malaysia

The Azalea Initiative is a 7-month long women’s leadership development programme to empower women from refugee communities here in Malaysia and to provide a safe space for them to express themselves and be heard. A programme started by the non-governmental organisation Akar Umbi back in January this year, we catch up with Wong Chen Li, impact driver with Akar Umbi to find out how the participants have progressed and the start of their second cohort. We’re also joined by Abeera and Fereshta, both of whom are refugees living in Malaysia and participants from the Azalea Initiative’s first cohort, to share their stories and the projects they’re working on.

World Refugee Day is observed annually, on the 20th of June, and as many of us know, Malaysia is not a party to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention. That means that refugees are not officially recognised in the country, thus affecting their right to health, to education, to work, and to simply be safe. In conjunction with this day, we want to feature the voices of refugees themselves on the show. We hear from Mariam, a young Rohingya refugee who came to Malaysia when she was only 5 years old, and is now advocating for better education for refugee girls here.

Image Credit: UNICEF South Asia

Some happy news - just last week, two Malaysian Trust Schools were named in the Top 10 shortlists for the new World’s Best School Prizes, which aims to identify, recognise, and celebrate schools’ leading and innovative practices, that have had a real impact on the lives of their students and community. Out of the thousands of schools that applied from around the world, Malaysia's Sekolah Kebangsaan Kempadang, a primary school in Kuantan, was named in the Top 10 shortlist for World’s Best School Prize for Innovation, and SMK Kampong Jawa, a secondary school in Klang, was named in the Top 10 shortlist for the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity. In this episode of Curriculum, we explore the concept of Trust Schools, which employs the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) model in education, with Nina Adlan Disney, the Executive Director of LeapEd Services.

Image credit: leapedservices.com

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that we cannot take the future of education for granted. The future likes to surprise us, so how can today's schools prepare students for a world that doesn't yet exist? What must be focussed on, and what must we aspire to, for students to succeed in the future? We speak to Anthony Partington, the Executive Principal of Sri KDU Schools, to discuss how our education system can and should be reshaped to keep up to date with the growing demands of the 21st century.

The Malaysian government recently announced that it will abolish the mandatory death penalty, currently applicable to a number of offences such as murder and terrorism, but also drug-related offences. Just to be clear, this does not mean that the government has agreed to abolish the death penalty as a whole. So, what’s the difference between the mandatory death penalty and the death penalty as a whole? And what does this upcoming abolition mean for our criminal justice system?

Image credit: Shutterstock

English is one of the most spoken languages across the world, if we take into account both native and non-native speakers. But in today’s world where language changes and evolves so quickly, how is English being used in different regions? And as the use of the language grows, how do different English accents influence how we perceive the language and, more importantly, the people who speak it? We speak to Dr Ella Jeffries, Lecturer in Sociolinguistics from the University of Essex to find out.

Image credit: Shutterstock

It's another episode of our ongoing series, Stay Home and Watch, where we revisit past films from the Freedom Film Festival's vaults, which tackled various human rights issues, here in malaysia. Today, we look back at the 2008 film, Pilihanraya Umum Ke-12: Demokerasi Atau Rebutan Kerusi, which highlighted some of the main issues and controversies surrounding the 2008 Malaysian general elections, which included the cancellation of the usage of indelible ink at the last minute. Joining us for this look back at our history are Abror Rivai, the director of the film, and Faisal Mustaffa, who was part of the secretariat of the Bersih Coalition.

Image credit: Freedom Film Network, Pusat Komas/Youtube

A few days ago, 59 Rohingya refugees were discovered stranded on a Thai island. They said they were abandoned by traffickers while journeying to Malaysia. 5 out of the 59 stranded were children. A police statement from Thailand said that the group appeared "starving and was likely to have had no food for three to five days.” 

But how can this have happened and what needs to be done to prevent it from occuring again? 

Joining us on the show is Hafsar Tamesuddin, Rohingya activist currently based in New Zealand. She’s also the chair of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN). 

Image credit: EPA-EFE